Pompeii Water Jar

1059 Words3 Pages

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 …show more content…

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

Open Document