Standing Deity Holding Horn and Bucket, 1st century
Romanexpand_more
Frescoexpand_more
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Rubinexpand_more 79.21
On View in Gallery 241expand_more
This panel comes from Pompeii, a prosperous city in southern Italy destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 and only rediscovered in 1748. It is a fragment of a larger wall painting removed during a 19th-century excavation. The figure probably represents a Lar, a Roman ancestral god honored as a guardian of the family’s welfare, and worshiped in a household shrine called a lararium. The god carries a drinking horn and a wine bucket, and wears a short, swirling cloak, all traditional attributes of a Lar. His pose indicates that he appeared as one of several figures in a horizontal mural within a lararium.
The inner walls of Pompeiian houses were richly decorated with paintings executed in fresco, a water-based tempera technique. The composition was drawn directly into a layer of damp lime plaster with pigments derived from mineral, vegetable and animal sources. The colors became bound to the plaster as it dried, and the work remained an integral part of the wall surface.
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Details
- Title
- Standing Deity Holding Horn and Bucket
- Role
- Artist
- Accession Number
- 79.21
- Curator Approved
This record has been reviewed by our curatorial staff but may be incomplete. These records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about this object, please email collectionsdata@artsmia.org.
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