Pompeii Frescoes

Though their names are no longer known, the painters of the ancient Roman world left behind a vast and vibrant body of work. Ironically, if not for the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, which buried Pompeii and the cities around the Bay of Naples, most of their paintings would have been lost to time. Instead, layers of compacted ash preserved these cities and their structures, and excavations in the mid-eighteenth century revealed that Roman homes were adorned with vividly colored paintings on their walls. During these early excavations, wall paintings, known as frescoes, were removed from their original contexts and came to form a core collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. In antiquity, Pompeii was a cosmopolitan place, bustling with activity year-round and serving as a retreat for wealthy Romans during the summers. As the cities around Mount Vesuvius grew, painters and their workshops decorated everything from modest houses to lavish villas. Roman homes were highly embellished, adorned with not only frescoes, but also mosaics and sculpture. The Painters of Pompeii tells the story of these Roman artists, through an exploration of their processes, subjects, and the manner in which homes were decorated. Like the city itself, our exhibition ends not with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, but with Pompeii’s rediscovery a millennia-and-a-half later and its legacy as a window into the ancient world.