Artifacts

This wall painting, which depicts the god Apollo, is thought to be a portrait of the Roman emperor Nero. Painted between 60 and 79 A.D., this image is a detail of the fresco found on the wall of one of the three triclinia in the Building of the Triclinia in Moregine, a suburban area slightly south of Pompeii. A triclinium is a dining room, named for the three couches that customarily furnished the room, and on which the Romans reclined as they ate their meals.

The study of Roman wall painting began in a systematic way with the discoveries of significant quantities of fresco paintings at Pompeii and in the greater Vesuvian region. Because of the excellent state of preservation of the paintings, it was possible to see a complete range of painting styles and to compare them to others for which there was no archaeological context. The definitive categorization of Roman wall painting into four “styles” was made on the basis of the Pompeian paintings.