Among the striking glassworks in the exhibition is this small, jewel-colored bowl found in the Vesuvian region. It is made of ribbon glass, a type of mosaic glass. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.
:The once-thriving communities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, buried by a mammoth volcano eruption in 79 AD and since excavated to reveal much about the daily lives, occupations, pastimes and art tastes of their people, surely rank among the wonders of the world. A recent visit to these resurrected towns, while underscoring the magnitude of the tragedy and the challenges of excavating the sites, offered rewarding visual insights into a long-lost society.
Today, some 2.5 million visitors annually walk the long, narrow stone streets of Pompeii, lined with remains of temples, shops, taverns, markets, a forum, an amphitheater, bordellos and homes of the rich and humble. Capacious villas, open for inspection, reveal frescoes, mosaics and other decorative artwork in varying stages of preservation. Many of the best works are now in museums in Naples and elsewhere.
Archaeological digging continues — one-third of Pompeii, for example, remains to be excavated — with the promise of unearthing structures and artifacts that will provide additional glimpses into the richness and breadth of social, cultural and artistic life, as well as the influence of classical Greece, on society in the region.
Those who built homes on coastal Campania between the Second Century BC and the First Century AD included the aristocracy and the "nouveau riche," with lesser places housing bakers and other working people. In Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia, the elite reveled in views of the sea and verdant landscape, and enjoyed lives of leisure. Their lives appear to have been filled with good food, entertainments — and lust. It is said that in Pompeii brothels outnumbered bakeries 35 to 32.
In the most famous painting of the devastating event, Italian Pierre-Jacques Volaire's "Eruption of Mt Vesuvius,” 1777, the flaming eruption dominates the background as people flee across a bridge trying to escape the lava and ash. It measures 53 by 89 inches. North Carolina Museum of Art.
Some seaside villas covered tens of thousands of square feet and included living quarters, libraries, dining rooms, gymnasiums, baths, gardens, fountains and swimming pools. Villa residents entertained lavishly and admired each other's art collections.
The area became an artistic center of considerable sophistication where the Roman elite favored traditional art based on Greek works, with exquisite interiors and exteriors decorated to evoke classical themes and styles. They blended Roman culture and Greek traditions.
The artists who embellished these structures were often Greeks attracted to the region by patrons ranging from the aristocracy, who demanded the most elaborate features in the grandest villas, to the urban elite, who emulated their superiors on a reduced scale. Homeowners demonstrated their affinity for the classical past with Greek-oriented surroundings, read Greek poems, attended Greek plays, discussed Greek philosophy, and maintained libraries stocked with texts by classical masters and adorned with portraits of them.
The titanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD, was so unexpected that residents failed to recognize the disaster about to overtake them until it was too late. The eruption began with an ominous dark column rising from Vesuvius's summit into the daytime sky, blocking out the sun and turning day into night. As the column rose, ash and stone rained down on the cities. Roofs collapsed on those who sought shelter in their homes or other buildings. Then, pyroclastic surges — waves of superheated gases and volcanic slurry — rolled rapidly over the region, burying — and preserving — everything. When the volcanic explosions subsided, an estimated 3,000 people had died, about ten percent of the area population.
