Third-Style Wall Fresco (Primary Title)
Wall Painting with a landscape scene (Exhibition Title)
Unknown (Artist)
In antiquity, both public and private buildings were filled with colorful frescoes made by painting wet plaster with naturally occurring pigments such as red and yellow ocher. The fresco tradition extended for centuries and penetrated all regions of the empire, but most surviving frescoes predate the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that buried and preserved Pompeii and its surroundings in AD 79.
This fresco is an example of the Third Pompeian Style in which a picture panel-here a landscape with a building-is painted like a decorative plaque against a solid color. The bird in the upper right is perched on the arm of a candelabrum.
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