| Paintings and mosaics in Pompeii and Ercolano: |
Fragments of a garden painting
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 These
two fragments probably came off the same wall, given the type of
rendering on the trellis-worked transenna with its moulded upper
frame. As is customary, on the other side of the fence we find a
garden full of bushes, including ivy, - a very common plant in
ancient paintings though always associated with the world of
Dionysus, laurel - a typical Apollonian plant, aloe, flowering
composites, and a peach tree bearing golden fruit, reminiscent
of that exotic world full of promises of wealth and happiness. A
garishly-coloured peacock is perched on the transenna - a
heavenly bird and symbol of Hera, along with another
bluish-coloured fowl with red throat and black wing-tips. The
trellis curves into an apsidiole containing a stilopinakion with
tragic theatrical mask upon which is perched a dove, the sacred
bird of Venus and symbol of marital fidelity.
 The
blending-in of references to the worlds, respectively, of
Dionysus and Aphrodites, both of whom were dispensers of
blissful happiness, is all too frequent in these pictures. And
furthermore it is interesting to note how juxtaposition of the
two pieces duplicates the same compositional pattern as that in
the garden of the House of the Amazons in Pompeii, now
completely vanished but documented in a tempera-painting by F.
Morelli (ADS 130, cfr. in Disegnatori p....fig....).
There, the peacock was, as it is here, in front of a laurel bush
and the other bird, which in our picture is in front of the
peach-tree, was there to be found in front of one of the palms,
thereby reminding us of the Nile, seeing as the garden already
contained a sacellum of Harpocrates. It seems clear, then, that
the craftsmen of the day, while keeping to certain well-known (to
them) and easy-to-use schema, were not above developing
variations depending on the subject-matter and the requirements
of the customer.
Bibliography: S. De Caro, Due "generi" nella pittura pompeiana:
la natura morta e la pittura di giardino, in AA.VV. La Pittura
di Pompei. Testimonianze dell'arte romana nella zona sepolta dal
Vesuvio nel 79 d.C., 1991, pp. 257-265; S. De Caro, Il Museo
Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Napoli 1994, p. 172
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Fonte: MANN
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