#i apologize for the hiatus

Villa of the Mysteries Second Style Wall Painting 

Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, Italy, ca. 60–50 bce

The houses and villas around Mount Vesuvius  have yielded a treasure trove of mural paintings, the most complete record of the changing fashions in interior decoration found anywhere in the ancient world. The sheer quantity of these paintings tells a great deal about both the prosperity and the tastes of the times. How many homes today, even of the very wealthy, have custom-painted murals in nearly every room?

After 80 BCE there was a new approach to mural design- known as the Second Style. The Second Style is in most respects the antithesis of the First Style which emulated masonry. Some scholars have argued that the Second Style also has precedents in Greece, but most believe it is a Roman invention. Certainly, the Second Style evolved in Italy and was popular until around 15 BCE, when Roman painters introduced the Third Style. Second Style painters did not aim to create the illusion of an elegant marble wall, as First Style painters sought to do. Rather, they wanted to dissolve a room’s confining walls and replace them with the illusion of an imaginary three-dimensional world.

An early example of the new style is the room that gives its name to the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii. Many scholars believe this chamber was used to celebrate, in private, the rites of the Greek god Dionysos (Roman Bacchus). Dionysos was the focus of an unofficial mystery religion popular among women in Italy at this time. The precise nature of the Dionysiac rites is unknown, but the figural cycle in the Villa of the Mysteries, illustrating mortals (all female save for one boy) interacting with mythological figures, probably provides some evidence for the cult’s initiation rites. In these rites young women, emulating Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, united in marriage with Dionysos. (x)