I suspect this one from the Toledo Museum of Art will be popular among our readers:
Andrea Mall discussed room groupings in Roman domestic architecture and their decoration at the Toledo Museum of Art. These suites of rooms, or diaetae as they were called in Latin, likely had their origin in lavish villas along the Bay of Naples. She first examined the extraordinary prototypes at the Villa of the Mysteries and the Villa at Boscoreale, then shifted to explore how Pompeians incorporated these decorative schemes into their urban homes. The Romans used several ways to distinguish suites from the rest of the home. Rooms could be associated through their architectural design, as in the House of Vettii; which has a suite consisting of successive rooms that recede into the residence. Rooms could also be linked through mythological depictions as in the House of the Centenary, whose frescoes display several myths, all tied together by a common theme of sacrifice. In the House of the Gilded Cupids, a suite likely intended for use by a woman, is completely devoid of men and focuses on feminine iconography.
Andrea Mall received her undergraduate degree in Classical art and archaeology and Latin from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and her master’s degree in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus in ancient art. In 2002, she participated in an Etruscan excavation at Poggio Colla in Tuscany, Italy. She moved to Toledo in 2006 to work with Dr. Sandra Knudsen on the exhibition In Stabiano featuring frescoes from villas located on the Bay of Naples. She has since taken a permanent position at the Toledo Museum of Art as the Assistant Registrar for domestic loans and exhibition. She recently made her publishing debut by contributing entries to the Toledo Museum of Art’s Masterworks publication.
They don’t seem to take into account spinoff damage to tourism that would no doubt follow another destruction of Pompeii and the like …
A major eruption of Italy’s Mount Vesuvius could result in 8,000 fatalities, 13,000 serious injuries and total economic losses of more than $24 billion, according to a new study supported by the Willis Research Network (WRN) that puts Vesuvius at the top of the list of Europe’s 10 most dangerous volcanoes.
[…]
Vesuvius poses the greatest risk to life and property, the study found, because it has the highest exposed population (1.7 million people), the highest exposed residential property value (US $66.1 billion), and the greatest potential for a seriously damaging eruption among the top 10 volcanoes. The study noted that more than 87 percent of the aggregated exposed property value for the 10 volcanoes is concentrated in the Neapolitan region near Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei.
From the accompanying text (with a somewhat unfortunate headline, as FT noted on twitter last night):
They are the skeletal remains of the victims that have been preserved under a thin veneer of plaster, to give them their life form.
“Until now, these figures have been dispersed around Pompeii itself, or to other museums around the world,” says Grete Stefani, the organiser of the exhibition at the nearby Antiquarium de Boscoreale, a five-minute drive from Pompeii.
Mary Beard was talking at the University of Wisconsin:
The University of Wisconsin Department of Classics hosted a distinguished professor of classics for a lecture about the ancient Roman city of Pompeii at the Chazen Museum of Art Thursday night as part of the Year in Humanities.
Mary Beard, a professor of classics from Cambridge University in England, told an audience of mostly non-students about the recent research in Pompeii — the ancient Roman city destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. — and the important insights it provides into daily ancient Roman life.
“Part of the fun of Pompeii is joining in the puzzling about it,” Beard said. “It’s not just being told what things were for, but trying to work out what things were for, what they looked like and what they were called.”
Beard also said she takes particular interest in the casual, everyday wall paintings and other forms of art the eruption preserved, such as a painting of a group of men playing dice over drinks. Beard said the paintings help dispel some misconceptions about ancient Roman culture, adding most common Romans wore multicolored tunics instead of the stereotypical tunics commonly seen in modern depictions of Roman life.
She added the presence of cubicles in one building led archaeologists to conclude it was a brothel, while other scientists have analyzed the remnants of lavatories and cesspits preserved after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius to learn more about daily Roman eating habits.
The presence of graffiti on Pompeii’s main thoroughfare has also helped historians learn more about political and literary life in ancient Rome, Beard said. The graffiti, some of which appears to be professionally created signage, attacks campaign rivals for local offices and parodies major works of ancient literature, such as Virgil’s “Aeneid.”
“The town still appears to be covered in writing,” Beard said. “These are not just the average graffiti; they were made by trained graffiti artists.”
Beard also explained the current archaeological debate over the exact date of Mt. Vesuvius’ eruption. She said though the undisputed year of the eruption remains 79 A.D., the season of the eruption is still debatable because of conflicting evidence provided by archaeologists.
While Beard said she believes the evidence known today supports an August eruption, the presence of “autumnal” clothing and a coin that suggests a September or October eruption date still make the date a point of contention among historians.
UW junior Nick Coombs said the lecture appealed to his art history major and his interest in urban planning.
He said despite the fact he was unfamiliar with Beard before attending the lecture, he was satisfied with the insights she provided into the study of the city.
“I thought it was really interesting how most of what we know about Pompeii is still steeped in fables and innuendo,” Coombs said. “What we definitively know is very small compared to what people insist they know through very questionable sources.”
Okay … for the past while I’ve been trying to understand a number of Italian newspaper articles about changes going on at the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali . It seemed that there were things going on ‘at the top’, but it took an item in English from the March edition of the Art Newspaper for them to actually make sense to me:
It is all change in Italy’s state administration of what it calls its “cultural assets”, the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, or MIBAC for short. Not only are nine high-ranking superintendents retiring [superintendents are the officials responsible for the state museums such as the Uffizi, for buildings such as the Coliseum, for archaeology and archives and conservation institutes, not to mention the much abused Italian landscape], but its top civil servant, Giuseppe Proietti, is also leaving. In a country where cultural life is deeply politicised, where career moves in the civil service depend on government whim to an extent that is unimaginable in the UK or US, the new secretary general is a Florentine, Roberto Cecchi (b. 1949).
The reaction nonetheless has been that the right man has been appointed. Cecchi trained as a conservation architect and entered the superintendency for architecture in 1980. From 1997 to 2001 he had responsibility for the “environmental and architectural assets” of Venice, a diplomatically challenging job that he discharged with energy, subtlety and pragmatism. Thereafter he returned to the ministry in Rome to head one of its directorate-generals.
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His priority now will be to provide new leadership for the superintendency network, currently suffering from depleted manpower, absurdly restrictive regulations, inadequate funding and a government that has repeatedly shown little respect for the cadre. He will also have to prove that he can collaborate with Mario Resca, the government’s specially appointed director-general for “valorizzazione” of the artistic treasures of Italy, a term that should mean “making the most of”, but which some Italian politicians today think means “squeeze for the maximum profit possible”.
Apparently the job is going to be tough … in the past week, it seems, there have been a couple of major embarassing incidents. According to La Repubblica, employees at the Pantheon interrupted a concert therein because it was ‘closing time’ (i.e. 6.00 p.m.; the concert was scheduled to end at 6.15). There’s a Youtube video of the incident (go to around the five minute mark for the employee’s entrance; enjoy the concert up to that point):
Then in StabiaNews (March 6) we read this incipit:
Avrebbero potuto fare di tutto, magari staccare un mosaico e portarselo a casa. Di certo sono saliti su pezzi di colonne e capitelli per farsi immortalare come antiche statue. Il monumento archeologico pi� conosciuto al mondo per due ore in bal�a dei turisti. Tutto perch� qualcuno ha �dimenticato� di chiudere i cancelli mentre era in corso – fino alle 10,30 – un’assemblea indetta dalla Cisl, Uil, Flp e Rdb. [etc. apologies for the characters there; not sure what’s going on with that]
… i.e., for two hours while a union meeting was going on, tourists basically had the run of Pompeii, because someone forgot to lock the gate.
… the next day, folks were downplaying the incident and noting the problems that have arisen since the site of Pompeii was connected to Naples’ jurisdiction (or something like that):
And as long as we’re in the environs of Naples, we can mention the restoration (of sorts) of the stadium at Puteoli, although no one can visit it due to lack of staff:
rogueclassicism 