| Paintings and mosaics in Pompeii and Ercolano: |
"The so-called Sappho"
"Young man with scroll"
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 These
two medallions, which were found on the same wall to either side
of a picture of Perseus and Andromeda, show a man and a woman in
the same manner as Terentius Neo and his wife, but both on their
own. The young girl with delicate features, dainty hairstyle and
golden hairnet holding her light brown curls, is holding the
stylus against her lips while supporting a polyptych made up of
four waxed tablets.
The young man is wearing an ivy crown and is holding a papyrus
scroll to his chin. Being turned three-quarters of a circle
towards the left, the general impression of the portrait is more
spontaneous than other similar "portraits". The emphasis placed
on the oval nature of the young man's face and his slightly
crooked nose are signs of a deliberate intention by the painter.
In effect this is the work of a particularly skilled artist who
knew how to give a personal touch to subjects who had been
painted time and time again; an example of this is the way the
girl has the tablets turned towards her rather than towards the
onlooker, and the rather affected manner with which she is
holding the stylus against her lips thereby gives the impression
of a slight pause for reflection before starting to write, an
activity which in the Roman world was an almost exclusively
female occupation.
 This
is clearly not an expression of realism, but merely the
reflection of an aspiration or particular consideration towards
the world of learning on the part of the commissioner for the
decoration of the house, which has also yielded fragments of
paintings relating to music and the theatre.
Bibliography: PAH I, p. 110; A. Allroggen Bedel, Herkunfu und
ursprünglicher Dekorationszusammenhang einiger in Essen
ausgesstellter Fragmente von Wandmalereien, in Neue Forschungen
in Pompeji, Recklinghausen, pp. 118-119; V. Sampaolo, Immagini
di donne, in Bellezza e lusso. XI Mostra Europea del Turismo,
Artigianato e delle Tradizioni Culturali, Roma 1992, p.104
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Fonte: MANN
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