A sublime photograph in which everything is perfect - the fine-featured young model with luscious curves and dramatic pose, the poignant, tragically picturesque ruins of Pompeii, the sunlight drawing delicate shadows on his ribs, even the detailed carving along the edge of the step adds to one beautiful image.
Edoardo before a mock door on an ancient Roman grave, in the impressive ruins of Pompeii. We can see another of Plüschow’s shots in the same location here.
Much as I love Vincenzo Galdi’s striking and often erotically charged photography, it is an equal delight to see him as a lovely young man modelling for his mentor, and lover, Guglielmo Plüschow. Few of the Arcadian photographers’ models became so involved in the process of creating images, and Galdi alone went on to work as a professional photographer in his own right. Here he sits in the ruined ancient Roman city of Pompeii, around 1895 - note his toes tucked neatly around the back of his calf!
MWW Artwork of the Day (3/30/16) Early Imperial Period (Roman, 27 BCE-117 CE) Portrait of Terentius Neo and his Wife (c. 45-79 CE) Fresco from their house, Region VII, Pompeii Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples
Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, “The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out … Indolence has destroyed the arts.”
In Greece and Rome, wall painting was not considered as high art. The most prestigious form of art besides sculpture was panel painting, i.e. tempera or encaustic painting on wooden panels. Unfortunately, since wood is a perishable material, only a very few examples of such paintings have survived, namely the Severan Tondo from c. 200 CE, a very routine official portrait from some provincial government office, and the well-known Fayum mummy portraits, all from Roman Egypt, and almost certainly not of the highest contemporary quality. The portraits were attached to burial mummies at the face, from which almost all have now been detached. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The background is always monochrome, sometimes with decorative elements.[20] In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Greco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones. They are remarkably realistic, though variable in artistic quality, and may indicate the similar art which was widespread elsewhere but did not survive. A few portraits painted on glass and medals from the later empire have survived, as have coin portraits, some of which are considered very realistic as well.
(Wikipedia extracts)
For more Pompeii frescos, visit this MWW Special Collection: * MWW Ancient/Medieval Art Gallery
The plaster casts of Romans killed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. are internationally famous, but scholars have long known that more people escaped the volcano’s destruction of the Bay of Naples than were suffocated by it. New evidence from inscriptions provides clues to where these refugees settled.
In a forthcoming open-access article in the journal Analecta Romana, archaeologist and historian Steven Tuck of Miami University explains how his creation of a database of Roman last names led him to match up records from Pompeii and Herculaneum with records from the parts of Italy unaffected by the destructive power of Vesuvius. Tuck’s goal in doing this work was not just to identify refugees but also “to draw conclusions about who survived the eruption, where they relocated, why they went to certain communities, and what this pattern tells us about how the ancient Roman world worked socially, economically, and politically.” Read more.
ANCIENT HISTORY MEME - 1/10 Events in the Ancient World
“Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood.’Let us leave the road while we can still see,’I said,’or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.’We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.”
~ Pliny the Younger, eye-witness account of the Destruction of Pompeii addressed in a letter to Tacitus.
I love spoons like this, that are basically just tiny bowls with handles, but this one is also fun because it allowed me to share with you the Treasure of Boscoreale, which is something a lot of the objects in the Louvre’s online catalogue are flagged with right now. (Round about page 915.)
TheTreasure of Boscoreale is a cache of silver and gold objects, dated across 500 years from the 4th century BCE to the first century CE. It was found in an ancient ruin at Villa della Pisanella (in Boscoreale, Italy, hence the name), which was buried in the eruption of Pompeii in 79 CE. I’m particularly fond of it because roughly half of the treasure is absolutely gorgeous and the other half is insanely hideous. There’s very little inbetween.
If you’re local to the Louvre or the British Museum the treasure items are well worth a trip to visit, and if you aren’t, well, Boscoreale is a fun rabbit-hole to chase down. Either way, enjoy this silver spoon!
[ID: A silver spoon consisting of a half-circle for the bowl of the spoon, with a burn mark on one side; the handle is an extremely narrow and thin spindle, like a chopstick, that ends in a point at the other end from the bowl of the spoon. It is simple, elegant, and looks nothing like most spoons you see in modern life.]
For my fashion inspiration this week, I turned to ancient Pompeii, an urban land that succumbed to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, located on the western coast of Italy, southeast of Naples. The ruins of the city laid buried under ash and earth until 1748 when murals and bodies posed as action figures frozen in time were revealed. While much has been excavatied, today, there are still over 50 acres of land yet to be explored, with growing access to the public as the archeology digexpands.
The allure of Pompeii lies in the catastrophic and immediate deaths of so many who failed to escape, becoming concrete mummies in situ. Recent discoveries in a nearby villa have shown scholars that life in Pompeii was not to be envied, with slavery paramount and social welfare nonexistent.
In spite of the tough Pompeii society, the urban streets were very multi-cultural where theatre was performed in Greek. Street vendors and food stalls provided Roman urbanites with stews of sheep, snail, and fish. Graffiti was found everywhere. Inside one food stall is the mural of a chained dog, with graffiti scrawled on the mural’s painted frame, blaspheming a snack bar owner.
Carnal proclivities were not uncommon in ancient Pompeii. For instance, an excavated fresco of the Spartan queen Leda hints at the everyday homage to the eroticism of mythology. In this story, Leda is seduced and raped by Zeus in swan-form bearing heirs whose power continued the deity tradition of wickedness.
Fortunately, today’s leaders of the Great Pompeii Project are using $137 million of EU funds to reach a vast audience, including Instagram and Twitter followers. Prior to this joint effort, the ruins of Pompeii suffered from environmental overexposure, looting, and Italian red-tape while being nestled in a region of organized crime. In fact, packs of stray Pompeiian dogs are now available for adoption as the archeological site leads modern conservationism efforts by abating tourism blight and corruption traps.
My first fashion plate is titled “Dog Paws Dress,” highlighting the round velvet foot-pads of our furry friends. The remaining designs are similarly inspired; can you spot these single inspirations?
Here is a listing of sources from the UWM Special Collections and the New York Times, which I have augmented with digital color and outline to emphasize particular details of my inspiration:
1, 3, 4, 8). Photographs of ancient Pompeii frescoes and two Roman bodies, published by The New York Times, written by Elisabetta Povoledo, 2018 - 2020. Images 3 an 4 inspired my own designs for the Swan Wrap Dress and the Curly Rooster Dress.
2, 8). My interpretation and contemporary design of the Dog Paws Dress inspired by David Hawcock’s pop-up book, The Pompeii Pop-Up, published by Universe Publishing in 2007.
5) Costume illustration of Roman warriors with animal predator as hooded cloak, in Geschichte des Kostums, published by E. Weyhe in 1923.
6) Woodcut prints by the illustrator Kurt Craemer as published in The Last Days of Pompeii by the Limited Editions Club in 1956.
9) Jewelry of the Roman civilization with several animal motifs in Alexander Speltz’s plate collection, The Coloured Ornament of All Historical Styles, Part I: Antiquity, published by Baumgärtner in 1915.
Ancient Rome’s well-to-do owned sprawling homes (known as a domus). One of the most common and significant parts of the domus was the atrium, a room or open courtyard in the center of the home. The atrium was the most public space in the domus, and often the largest. It was the centerpiece of the home, a place for family to gather as well as the first room guests would enter, and the room in which clients would wait for their patron to invite them into his office.
The furnishings, painted and sculpted portraits of the patriarch/patron and his family, floor mosaics and richly colored wall frescoes worked to showcase the family’s wealth - and to really drive the point home, elaborate jewelry and other glittering objects of wealth would often be prominently displayed on a small marble table.
Some atriums had a small altar in the corner, dedicated to the particular gods of the family. More practically, the center of the atrium had an impluvium, a small basin sunk into the middle of the room below a hole in the ceiling, which would collect rainwater for household use. Drains would take in excess rainwater during rain seasons and store it for dryer summer months [x].
The mosaic picture of a domesticated dog, leashed and chained, with the words “cave canem” (beware of the dog) written under the animal, greeted (or, well, warned) visitors upon entering the house. The figure served as protection over the more private quarters of the 2nd century BC Roman home, one of the most famous at the site thanks to its elaborate mosaic floors and frescoes depicting scenes from Greek mythology.
