KITCHENS AND DINING ROOMS AT POMPEII ... - Get a Free Blog

Black (usually in the socle), red (the middle zone) and white (the upper zone) remain the
most popular colors in wall paintings, often with added yellow. Maroon, purple, green and blue
also make appearances, in borders and decorative edging as well as in backgrounds for
landscape and mythical panel paintings. The majority of paintings are of the third style (fifteen);
seven fourth styles and two second styles also appear. Paintings are therefore relatively 'up-to-
date', though not so much as in the large houses, wherein fourth style paintings dominate (see
below). For motifs, there are numerous vignettes of cupids, winged or dancing women, small
landscape or seascape panels, still lives of food, birds, vessels and masks and medallions. What
distinguishes the decoration of these dining areas from those in smaller buildings is the
prevalence of large-scale panel painting, especially of mythological scenes (in eleven dining
areas) that include characters such as Hercules, Icarus, Andromeda, Dionysos and maenads,
Hermes, Paris, and Diana. A few other large scale paintings also appear, for instance large
landscapes or the 'portrait' of a child. 156 Megalography appears in the two second style dining
areas as well. 157
Casa grande The twenty-seven identifiable dining areas in large houses are very well
preserved on the whole, and contain the highest quantity and quality of decoration of any
building category. Floors are variously paved in cocciopesto, mosaic and marble. 158 Emblemata
are constructed of opus sectile (three times), mosaic (three) and opus vermiculatum (two examples).
Floors combine techniques: I.4.5+25 had black and white mosaic bordering a marble pavement,
I.7.10-12 (16) a cocciopesto floor with inset tesserae around a mosaic emblema, and I.7.10-12 (17) a
cocciopesto floor with opus sectile marking the spaces where couches did not rest, centered on an
opus vermiculatum emblema. This latter emblema was found covered with a lead sheet for
protection, attesting to the value of the pavement and the care that must have been taken of floors
that were also works of art.
Large painted panels with mythological scenes (especially with maenads, Perseus, or
Dionysos) dominate the decoration, appearing in ten dining areas. Vignettes, landscape panels,
still lives, medallions, bird and garden scenes are also very popular. Red, black, white and
yellow are the colors of choice; green, blue and purple also appear in borders and the background
of landscape panels. Dining room (11) in the Casa del Menandro is a rare example of a room
painted almost entirely in green, a color normally confined to minor details. Perhaps only in a
156 Large landscape panel: I.7.19 (b); 'portrait' of the child named Successus: I.9.3-4 (5).
157 Second style dining areas: I.6.4 (p), which was primarily in use when its house was joined with I.6.2 (as a
casa grande). The painting depicts heraldic elephants, a seated philosopher, and the muse Clio. The scenes
in I.9.13-14 (d) are fragmentary and faded.
158 Plain cocciopesto (five examples), cocciopesto with inset white tesserae or limestone chips (six
examples), black and white or polychrome mosaic (eleven examples) and even slate and mosaic (one
example).
152