The Still Life with Peaches and Water Jar was completed by an unknown Roman painter roughly around 1st century AD. The piece’s present location is the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Archeologists discovered the work in the House of the Stags, in Herculaneum. Herculaneum once a wealthy, seaside town on the Bay of Naples about a few miles north of Pompeii, was also destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius on August 24, 79 C.E. The piece is partly detached from the original wall and inserted in a wooden frame.
Ancient paintings rarely survive, since it is a much less durable medium than stone or bronze sculpture, common for early Greek and Roman art. Interestingly, thanks to the ancient Roman city of Pompeii traces of Roman wall painting
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However, Pompeii and the surrounding cities buried by Vesuvius retained a prime continuous source of evidence for the period. The Roman wall paintings in Pompeii that Mau categorized were true frescoes, or buon fresco, meaning that pigment was applied to wet plaster, fixing the pigment to the wall. Despite this durable technique, painting is still a fragile medium and, once exposed to light and air, can fade significantly. Therefore, the paintings discovered in Pompeii were a rare sight for archaeologist and art historians …show more content…
The reason for the name dates back to the ancient Greeks, which the Romans incorporated into their culture. Xenia, hospitality, was shown to guests who were far from home by accommodating them and comforting them. However, the Romans were not focused on being polite to guest, instead it was considered a “religious obligation”, an idea preserved in both the Homeric epic and Greek mythology. The Greeks believed that “Zeus Xenios, Zeus’s role as protector of guests, wandered in disguise with travelers, testing the capacity of hosts to be generous and tolerant.” Granted, the devotions the Greeks had with pursuing the quality of xenia did not compare to the Romans. Nevertheless, the Romans took pride in their ability to provide hospitality to their guests, especially those whose social favor they wanted to earn. Presumably, those who were more prosperous financially and socially prominent, like a governor or state official. Xenia, for the Romans, was more about the “display of hospitality for appearance’s sake rather than a religious
Sebastian Pether’s piece of work called The Eruption of Vesuvius (1835) combines the silver watery reflection of the moon with the hot red molten lava that is flowing down its mountainsides. Though during Pether’s generation he wasn’t the only one to paint the well-known Mount Vesuvius, Joseph Wright of Derby also painted 30 paintings of the volcano. This art piece is currently located at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The piece is oil media on panel that is framed with a beautifully designed border, where it is hanging on a wall in the one of the rooms, with a one-dimension view. The quality of the piece owes itself to the color and lighting, which captures your immediate attention and guides the viewer through the piece.
The Pompeii exhibition at LACMA was an astounding visualization of history. The exhibition provided all sorts of objects; from sculptures, glass figures, painted art, and more. These art pieces specify the kind of life that was taking place in the Bay of Naples during the second century. As we know the cities around the Bay of Naples, which include Pompeii and Herculaneum, became tourist attractions when the cities were excavated after they were buried from the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. However, the comprehension of how the art pieces made their way into the museum is just a little fact of the history behind them. With this exhibition we are able to feel like we are back in time and living in the exhilarating time of Pompeii.
Xenia, the ancient Greek concept of hospitality, was one of the foremost forces in Homer’s Iliad. The Achaeans respect it above nearly all else, and failure to adhere to its strict customs could lead to the forfeiture of countless souls.
All throughout The Odyssey there are scenes of good and bad xenia, or hospitality. It can be seen that hospitality is extremely important in the Greek culture, both how someone treats their guests and how the guests treat the host. A closer look chronologically into the good, then bad examples will show how one acts affects the actions that are brought upon them when they either follow or disobey Zeus' Law.
People who are in need have always been around, and will also continue to be here; therefore, the means of hospitality should be spread. Throughout Greek culture, xenia has been a prominent method for those who are in need. Homer could obviously see the importance of hospitality since he put such emphasis on it in his work. This re-occurring theme has however, lost some of its relevance through time, but can still be shared through small acts of kindness. The Bible even says to “offer hospitality to one another without complaint” (1 Peter 4:9).
In a modern world such as ours, it is sometimes difficult to understand special customs that were most highly respected in ancient cultures. However, some have been able to adapt with the times and transform into decorum that can be still valued today. Xenia can be a perfect example. Coming from the ancient Greeks, xenia was the religious and civic commitment of hospitality that was expected of all guests of people as well as from the hosts themselves. The ancient Greeks held xenia in the highest regard and believed in great consequences if the rules of xenia were abused in any way. Xenia, to them, was much more than guidelines for them to follow; it was a duty that required utmost regard.
Hospitality today is nothing like it was in Ancient Greece. Today, good hospitality is being friendly and respectful to a guest. In Ancient Greece, hospitality was something people had to do, or face the wrath of Zeus. Zeus’s law of hospitality is that any stranger that comes to your home, the host must be willing to feed, entertain, and maybe offer them a bath and anything else they might be in need of without question until those things had been given, and also give them a parting gift. The guest, in turn, would not be a burden in any way. In The Odyssey, most people follow the rules of hospitality, but there are others who do not. The Greek concept of xenia shows the serious priority the Greeks place on the laws of the gods.
Pompeii is possibly the best-documented catastrophe in Antiquity. Because of it, we know now how the Pompeians lived because they left behind an extensive legacy of art, including monuments, sculptures and paintings. Pompeii lay on a plateau of ancient lava near the Bay of Naples in western Italy in a region called Campania, less than 1.6 kilometers from the foot of Mount Vesuvius. With the coast to the west and the Apennine Mountains to the East, Campania is a fertile plain, traversed by two major rivers and rich soil. However, in the early days, it was not a remarkable city. Scholars have not been able to identify Pompeii’s original inhabitants. The first people to settle in this region were probably prehistoric hunters and fishers. By at least the eight century B.C., a group of Italic people known as the Oscans occupied the region; they most likely established Pompeii, although the exact date of its origin is unknown. “The root of the word Pompeii would appear to be the Oscan word for the number five, pompe, which suggests that either the community consisted of five hamlets or, perhaps, was settled by a family group (gens Pompeia)”(Kraus 7). In the course of the eight century B.C., Greek and Etruscan colonization stimulated the development of Pompeii as a city around the area of the Forum. A point for important trade routes, it became a place for trading towards the inland. Up until the middle of the 5th century B.C., the city was dominated politically by the Etruscans.
Nearly two millenniums ago a massive eruption rocked the Roman city of Pompeii, destroying buildings and coating the town in deep layers of volcanic ash. Fortunately, this same ash served as a tool for preservation and has allowed archaeologists to discover the remains of various types of Pompeii’s art. The values, beliefs, and daily workings of Roman culture have been brought to new light through the paintings, mosaics, statues and other forms of art found in the lost city of Pompeii.
The Romans have adopted many features from the Greek style of art and architecture during the third and second centuries B.C. During that time period the Romans discovered that they have taking a liking to Greek statues, which they placed in many different places. The Roman sculptors then decided to also start making statues alongside the Greeks. The statues that the Romans created were realistic looking with, sometime, unpleasant details of the body. The Greeks made statues with, what they thought of, ideal appearances in the statues figure. Sculpture was possibly considered the highest form of art by the Romans, but figure painting was very high considered as well. Very little of Roman painting has survived the tests of time.
Pompeii was destroyed by an eruption that came from Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Pompeii was located in southwestern Italy, where about 20,000 people lived. The people who originally settled the area were Oscan. However, rich Romans lived there in a villa or a farm. Pompeii had no electricity, so they had to rely on the sun for electricity and heat. The temperature was conducive to growing crops. Pompeii was one of the richest cities in the Roman Empire. (“Ancient Rome for Kids: The City of Pompeii;” Cartwright).
Xenia, at the ancient Greeks society, simply means hospitality: the standard practice of the host and the guest from various locales. Examples from providing food and drink, through offering bath and gift, and to protect and escort guests to their destination are extremely common and what seemed appropriate to expects from the host. Basic rules of xenia include how host should respect guest by not asking questions about one before one finish dining, and how guest should respect host by offering gift and to not to be a burden. Through out Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, hospitality plays a major and constant theme where it at least appeared in 12 different occasions. At Homeric times due to limitation on transportation, people can only travel by vessel or by foot, which were much slower than current sorts of transportation and made the journey back then much longer and more challenging. Additionally, there were
...ws the transition from archaic to the classical period. The Roman’s continued with a more realistic style with such statues as Aristocrat with Ancestors and Marcus Aurelius. In wall paintings at Pompeii the artists used great color and realism on the people’s faces.
Fresco was one of the most popular works artists did during this time because it was fairly cheap and a lot of buildings, like churches had no windows and were just plain, concrete walls. Frescos helped soften up the walls by telling stories through the frescos. “Fresco was born of a close collaboration between the artist and the mason” (Faure 9). To paint a fresco, the artist...
To begin this discussion, it is crucial to understand what exactly art conservation and restoration is and what it entails. Art Conservation/Restoration can be defined as an array of professions dedicated to “approaching every painting (or artwork) conservatively in that only what needs attention is addressed and nothing excessive is ever performed, all of the materials used are modern…” . This is the process of careful examination, documentation, and attention and treatment of a weakening art object due to age, neglect, and utilization. These objects can range from paintings to architecture to any number of things.