Pictorial Representation in the Roman World

4 credits · Undergraduate

This course presents surviving evidence of pictorial representation in the Roman world. Including the earliest remains from the city of Rome; the suites of painted rooms in the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples; and Roman mosaics from Italy, North Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean. Topics: ‘four styles’ of Pompeian interior decoration; the architect Vitruvius’ denunciation of contemporary painting in the early Augustan period; the reproduction of Greek ‘old master’ paintings from pattern books; the surviving paintings of the Domus Aurea, the emperor Nero’s ‘Golden House’ in Rome; the painting of marble statues and reliefs; and the colored mummy portraits preserved by the sands of the Egyptian desert.