Fresco of a Macedonian at Boscoreale

The Archaeological Museum of Naples has a very rich collection of frescoes coming from the many cities that were buried by the ashes of the Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The first cities that spring to mind are, of course, Pompeii and Herculaneum, but there are many more resorts in the Bay of Naples that were occupied by the rich and the famous in the first century AD. To name just a few, we may remember, besides Boscoreale, cities like Stabiae, Pozzuoli, Cuma, Baiae, Portici, Boscotrecase, and the nearby islands of Capri and Ischia.

It is hard to single out the most beautiful, most original, most telling, or the most colorful fresco. Some pieces have been reassembled to reflect the room in which they originally stood, and others are lonely images of a framed item.

One of the frescoes that truly catches my attention is this one from Boscoreale. It was retrieved from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor and shows clear Macedonian links as the main figure wears the typical kausia and has a Macedonian stared shield standing next to him. According to some sources, it may depict Antigonus II Gonatas (the son of Demetrios I of Macedonia) and his mother Phila, or simply be the personification of Macedonia and Asia/Persia. The lone standing figure to the left has been labeled as a philosopher.

Many more frescoed panels of the same villa have been acquired at some stage by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where a so-called cubiculum has been entirely reconstructed.

The overall link with Macedonia has been developed in my earlier post about the Alexander mosaic. 

The Villa of Boscoreale was probably built around 40-30 BC and had three stories. The ground floor alone counted more than thirty rooms, including several Peristyle or inner courtyards. After its discovery in 1900, it was only partially excavated, and most of the remains were reburied for safekeeping.