LACMA

Feature 3 Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples Mention Pompeii, and images of destruction immediately come to mind. On the night of August 24, ad 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted and rained ash on the prosperous town located on its southern slope. Herculaneum, located to the northwest, was engulfed in a flood of volcanic gas and mud, and luxury villas throughout the region, too, were destroyed. Disasters both natural and man-made have obliterated much of the ancient world, but Pompeii and the sites around the Bay of Naples are different in two important ways. First, we have an eyewitness description of the event: Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (aka Pliny the Younger), whose uncle was commander of the imperial fleet stationed at Misenum, north of Neapolis (modern Naples), provides us with a vivid account of the eruption: " The buildings were now shaking with violent shocks, and seemed to be swaying to and fro as if they were torn from their foundations. Outside on the other hand, there was the danger of falling pumice-stones.... We also saw the sea sucked away and apparently forced back by the earthquake: at any rate it receded from the shore so that quantities of sea creatures were left stranded on dry sand. On the landward side a fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire, like flashes of lightning magnified in size.... My mother implored, entreated, and commanded me to escape as best I could.... I refused to save myself without her, and grasping her hand forced her to quicken her pace.... I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood.... You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore." Second, although the eruption suddenly put an end to life in the immediate environs of Vesuvius, it paradoxically preserved much of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae, and other sites. They were rediscovered in the eighteenth century, excavated, and studied by archaeologists up to the present day. Most of these sites provide us with fascinating information about ancient life unrecoverable elsewhere. This much is well known, and numerous exhibitions have focused on what the sites reveal about daily life at the height of the Roman Empire, almost 2,000 years ago. Pompeii and the Roman Villa offers a new perspective. Its focus is not on preserved cooking pots and medical instruments, baths or brothels, nor on the cataclysmic deaths of so many individuals made so eerily present by plaster casts poured into hollows of the lava that suffo- cated them. Rather, this exhibition examines how elite Romans, who made the Bay of Naples a prized vacation spot, indulged in luxurious living and adopted the art and culture of ancient Greece to express their own refine- ment and learning. More than one hundred artifacts provide visitors with a new view of how ancient Romans employed the "Old Masters" of their day, the art of ancient Greece: gold, silver, cameo, and glass artifacts, as well as sculpture, painting, and mosaic. Presented by: Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Eruption of Vesuvius, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, image © Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, photograph Daniel Martin

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