A remarkable Roman wall-painting was found in the centre of Rome on 4 March by the archaeologist Elisabeta Carnabuci. It is an extremely ambitious cityscape. The building in which it stood is little understood, the wall on which it was painted has not been completely excavated, the painting has not yet been cleaned, and detailed photographs are not yet available. Yet it is not too early to say that this one find vastly increases our store of information about Roman visual ideas of urban space and of public and private architecture.
How specific is this view? Is it a real city? Is it Rome? There are precedents for the angle of view and for the general style. A unique image from Pompeii shows the town itself, and even more surprisingly, a historical event — a famous riot between the Pompeians and their neighbours. The other paintings in this style are images of Roman pleasure-villas on the resort-coasts of southern Italy, and they are usually plausible fantasies. Most of them come from houses near the coastline where real luxury villas stood. The Romans also liked to paint realistic garden scenes beside real gardens. It is interesting to find a painted super-city in a lavish private house in the greatest metropolis of the ancient world. Nearby in Rome we know of other decorative schemes which played with views of the city and out of the city, juxtaposing town and country in real vistas and artistic representation. It seems likely that this is a further example of that taste.
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