| Paintings and mosaics in Pompeii and Ercolano: |
Face of young girl
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 This
fragment belongs to a picture from the first part of the Third
Style, and probably shows a mythological subject. Only the
downward-looking delicate face of a young girl remains, her
brown hair done up behind her, garlanded with an olive branch,
and wearing long golden earrings. Since we can distinguish two
different areas of colour behind her, one white and the other
pale beige, and the head appears to belong to a standing figure,
it has been suggested that the white area refers to the pillar
of a building, while the beige section refers to shadow cast by
the pronaos; it is believed that the piece may be part of a
picture showing the arrival of Jason at the court of Pelias.
Several fragmented copies of pictures on this theme (with the
exception of that already mentioned from the House of Jason IX
5, 18-21) have come down to us, and we can see the king
welcoming the foreigner, as he (the king) leaves the offertory
ceremony temple with his daughters who, like him, are bedecked
with garlands, watching the man who has just arrived.
Particularly relevant is the girl on the far right of the
building who is standing in an area half-way between the
buildings and the shadow.
The artist is probably the same as the one who did the large
pictures in the Imperial Villa at Pompeii, especially that
depicting the fall of Icarus; we find that the seated female
figure facing leftwards features the same type of ear, small
fleshy lips, regular profile and calm expression, typical signs
of the perfect yet cold figures that were symptomatic of a
period that saw the triumph of the Academic approach to art.
Bibliography: R. Herbig, Nugae pompeianorum, p. 17; V. Sampaolo,
Immagini di donne, in Bellezza e lusso. XI Mostra Europea del
Turismo, Artigianato e delle Tradizioni Culturali, Roma 1992, p.
104, n. 2
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Fonte: MANN
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