Detail of a Fragment of a Wall Painting in the Princeton University Art Museum, Aug 2009

Fragment of a Wall Painting
Roman, third quarter of the 1st century AD
Fresco

# 1999-149

In the central panel, which is framed by polychrome moldings and a gilt colonnette, a man with a carrying pole, is crossing a bridge to a small island. A stairway leads to a walled sanctuary with a two-storey facade, a turret, and a sacred grove behind. In the distance, across the water, other buildings and trees are visible in the haze. Landscapes such as this are a common feature of murals from Herculaneum and Pompeii; this fresco also may have decorated a house or villa buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

Text from the Princeton University Art Museum label.