Details

LOT 0124

Roman Polychrome Wall Painting Fragment

MID 1ST CENTURY A.D.

6 3/4 in. (1.26 kg total, 17 cm high including stand).

Decorated with a frieze of foliage and volutes from which a blossom is springing, the image framed by a green band of arrows, an ochre and cream line border below; background painted in magnificent rosso pompeiano (Pompeian red); mounted on a custom-made display stand.

Provenance

From a European collection formed in the 19th century or earlier, based on the custom-made tooled leather box similar to another fragment kept in a case of similar manufacture with a label reading 'Fragment de Pompéi provenant de la vente Préat 1868' sold at Sotheby's New York, 12 December 2013, lot 84.
Mitsukoshi department store, Nihonbashi, Tokyo, by 1974.
Japanese art market, 1974-1978.

Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D'Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate number no 11826-207724.

Literature

Cf. Gullini, G., La pittura romana, Torino, 1969, pp.72ff.; Gullini, G., Problemi di pittura romana, Torino, 1972, pp.60ff.; Andreae, B., Cangik, H., De Martino, F., Grilli, A., Gullini, G., Princeps Urbium, cultura e vita sociale nell’Italia Romana, Milano, 1991, fig.126; Maulucci, F.P., Pompei, Guida Archeologica degli scavi con itinerari, piante e ricostruzioni, Napoli-Milano, 1987; Berg, R., Kuivalainen, I., Domus Pompeiana M. Lucretii, IX,3, 5.24, The inscriptions, Works of Art and Finds from the Old and New Excavations, Vantaa, 2019, fig.7, p.215; for Roman painting of this type in general see Henig, M., A Handbook of Roman Art, a comprehensive survey of all the arts of the Roman world, New York, 1983, p.96.

Footnotes

Our painted stucco was probably part of a decorative frame, like that visible in the cubiculum of the Villa of P. Fannius Sinistor, in Boscoreale, which is earlier but represents a model of continuity through the decoration of the Roman walls. This filling of the tablinum and other rooms with ornamental plant-type columns and panels decorated with leaves and plant scrolls is found in Pompeii in certain houses, such as that of Caecilius Jucundus.