| Paintings and mosaics in Pompeii and Ercolano: |
View of a harbour
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 The
cluster of buildings around the wharf, the colonnades, the
columns crowned with statues, the piles of the jetty, the ships
off shore and the rowing boats, and the fishermen bent over
their lines, all help to enliven this ancient harbour scene. It
has been claimed repeatedly that this must be Puteoli, because
of the arch adorned with tritons on the end of the jetty, a
feature which identifies it with the Phlegraean town and which
was the largest commercial port on the western Italian seaboard,
and one which saw the arrival of cargo ships from the eastern
provinces for the whole of the Republican period and the early
Imperial period.
Attempts have also been made to associate the loosely circular
building on the right with the amphitheatre, and the
quadri-porticoed building nearby with the so-called Serapeum or
macellum which, even if not at that distance, are in any case of
similar proportions for those who are looking from the sea. But
it was not the aim of this picture, which was found at Stabiae,
another town with a harbour and which, among other things, saw
the arrival during the eruption in 79 A.D. of Pliny the Elder to
meet his friend Pomponianus, to reproduce any specific real
place but rather to give an idea of what any 1st century A.D.
harbour might have looked like, with extremely pleasing results.
Bibliography: W. Peters, Landscape in Romano-Campanian mural
Paintings 1963, p. 152; V. Sampaolo, in AA.VV. Unter dem Vulkan.
Meisterwerke der Antike aus dem Archäologischen Nationalmuseum
Neapel, Bonn 1995 (passim Cat. di affreschi, mosaici e
acquerelli), p. 128
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Fonte: MANN
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