Best Secco

The frescoes from Livia’s Villa at Primaporta offer a remarkably preserved glimpse into Roman aristocratic life during the Augustan period. These secco wall paintings depict an elaborate garden scene, creating a seamless illusion of depth and space. The detailed depiction of plants and architectural...

The Livia’s Garden Room is an Augustan-era fresco depicting a meticulously rendered garden scene. Created around 60 BC, it showcases innovative secco techniques – painting on dry plaster – to achieve a remarkably realistic illusion of vegetation within the Villa Livia at Palazzo Massimo in Rome. Thi...

The frescoes of the House of the Vettii are an extensive ensemble of Roman wall paintings preserved in a large residence at Pompeii. Created before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, they decorate reception rooms, service areas, and private spaces with architectural frameworks, mythological na...

The frescoes of the Villa of Oplontis decorate a large Roman residential complex at Torre Annunziata near Pompeii, traditionally associated with Poppaea Sabina. Buried during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, the villa preserves elaborate architectural paintings, especially examples of the Roman Se...

The Boscoreale frescoes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are Roman wall paintings removed from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor near Boscoreale, north of Pompeii. Painted during the first century BC, they are major examples of the Second Pompeian Style, which used architectural perspective, columns...

The Domus Aurea frescoes are surviving wall and vault decorations from the palace complex built for the Roman emperor Nero after the fire of Rome in 64 CE. Their painted architecture, delicate figures, animals, plants, and fantastical hybrids became influential after Renaissance artists explored the...

The Villa of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase preserves delicate Third Style frescoes from around 11 BC, prized for refined mythological panels on black and red grounds, largely now in New York's Met.

The Odyssey Landscapes are fragments of a Roman wall-painting cycle discovered on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and now preserved in the Vatican Museums. Dating to the late Republican period, the surviving panels place episodes from Homer's Odyssey within expansive landscapes and identify figures with...

The House of the Vettii is a richly decorated Roman residence at Pompeii associated with the freedmen Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus. A celebrated frieze shows cupids performing adult trades and crafts, including activities connected with wine, metalworking, perfume, and commerce...

Villa Arianna is a large Roman residential complex at ancient Stabiae, near modern Castellammare di Stabia in Campania. It was buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and was explored during excavations that began in the eighteenth century. The villa takes its modern name from a fresco...

The House of the Tragic Poet is a Roman residence in Pompeii noted for its elaborate mythological decoration despite its relatively modest size. Its surviving paintings belong largely to the Fourth Style and include scenes associated with the Trojan War, sacrifice, marriage, and theatrical performan...

The Birth of Venus fresco is the principal garden painting in the House of Venus in the Shell at Pompeii, a Roman residence buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. It shows Venus reclining in a large shell on the sea, accompanied by figures associated with the marine setting, while a gard...

The House of the Gilded Cupids in Pompeii contains a room associated with the worship of Isis, decorated with Egyptianizing religious imagery. The paintings and cult objects found in the house demonstrate how Egyptian deities and visual motifs were incorporated into private religious practice in the...