BAlready after the first of 123 framed Pompeian original frescoes – through the wooden frame, Charles III. Bourbon in the 18th century, so to speak, in icons of antiquity – the nagging conscience is calmed. Until the start of the visit to the Museo Civico in Bologna, one had constantly asked oneself whether it really had to be carted the nearly 2000-year-old and therefore naturally fragile works from southern Italy to northern Italy. In view of the women’s heads, delicately painted on marble, which form the prelude to the unique show in Bologna’s picturesque 15th-century Palazzo Galvani, one knows immediately: It was the right decision and is completely justified.
70 percent of the more than 100 phenomenal works come from the depot of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples and are therefore usually hidden from the view of Pompeii lovers. In fact, they have never been exhibited in this abundance, simply because the museum in Naples is already overcrowded and the archaeological park in Pompeii itself does not have the conservational possibilities to exhibit the irreplaceable pieces in a protected manner in their places of origin, the villas of 79 AD in the Amber of the volcanic ash preserved city.
Empress Sisi also admired the frescoes
The second picture on display shows how Pompeii fever broke out in Europe from the early excavations of 1748 and the founding of the Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli in 1787: A dancer from this period in a billowing robe is composed of hundreds of tiny mosaic stones and is leading a piece in towels. But the stones called tesserae are old, assembled from mosaic finds in Pompeii. Similarly eclectic, Empress Sisi of Austria had neo-Pompeian frescoes installed in her gymnasium. And Ludwig I of Bavaria decorated his Pompejanum high above the Main in Aschaffenburg from 1840 onwards based on the model of the Casa dei Dioscuri.
However, the Bolognese exhibition is not about the dozens of presentations without thesis on the splendor of Pompeii, or even a dry chronological unwinding of the four styles of ancient painting in the city, which, as is well known, have only survived here and in Stabiae in this density. Rather, the archaeologist and exhibition curator Mario Grimaldi wants to use the show to create awareness of how the frescoes were created, what purposes they were used for and how exemplary images were repeatedly quoted and adapted for new spatial contexts – across all genres such as landscapes, Gardens, architecture, but also mythological and erotic representations.
Frescoes from Pompeii
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Worth a trip
Not only are crucibles with almost 2000-year-old paint residues and all kinds of technical aids such as plumb lines on threads for straight vertical lines, one of the very rare preliminary drawings with the finely incised basic composition of the later picture and compasses in the Museo Civico. And when battle shields and jugs shimmer in copper red on the wall paintings, the corresponding real object is exhibited next to it. The oil lamps and candelabras found in Pompeii provoke the question of the original lighting conditions in the often windowless rooms of the painted houses – in any case, the non-static, flickering light once added life to the pictures.