The last two paintings I want to show you today are both portrait paintings.
And you have to think of these portrait
paintings like the mythological panel pictures, as paintings
that were inserted into walls or inserted into,
probably, mostly, third and fourth style Roman walls.
And when all, when those treasure hunters hit Pompeii
and Herculaneum, these were the ones they went to, first.
[LAUGH] They, and
they, and they cut a fair number of these out
of their original contexts and, and made off with them.
But some of them fortunately, have found their
way into, especially into the Naples Archaeological Museum.
This is the first one I want to show you,
an absolutely fetching portrait of a young woman, from Pompeii.
That dates to around a, a the middle of the first century AD, that is 45 to
50 AD.
And we see it here, and it's a,
it's a, it's a, it's an incredible painted portrait
by clearly once again, a very talented artist
who's done an extraordinary job of capturing this woman.
It's a very, very, very appealing portrait.
We see her, she's quite attractive young woman with
wide, sort of hazel colored eyes sharp, straight brows
a straight nose, a cupid's cupid's lips.
As you can see down below, the hair is magnificently rendered.
You can see that she has a bevy of corkscrew curls.
Those in the front, toward the front of her face
are highlighted and match very well, the color of her eyes.
She wears gold hoop earrings, that also mimic the curlicues of her locks.
And then you can see also, that she wears something that appears to have
been fashionable to wear, among Roman and Pompeian women, and that is a gold
hairnet, at the very apex, which adds shine and, and, and glimmer to her
port, to the hair; but also you can see, the hair beneath it, through that.
Down below you can see, she wears a green garment and a, a sort of purple or
brownish mantle over her shoulder, and she holds a stylus to her lips.
And she has in her other hand a, a, as you can see,
a tablet in front of her, and she is, it is clear, as she
puts that stylus to her lips, she is deep in thought, very pensive,
figuring out, what it is that she's going to write, on her wax tablet because
these were wax and they would write into the wax tablets.
Because she is caught in this moment of deep thought a number of scholars
have suggested, that she must represent the Greek poetess, Sappho.
Which is why I put that painted portrait of Sappho, on your monument list.
But you can see, I put Sappho in quote marks.
I think this is almost certainly not Sappho it is probably
a Pompeiian woman and she may not be thinking about the poetry that she's about
to write, but perhaps the shopping list that she's putting together, before she
makes her way down to the central market, of the city of Pompeii or
sends her slave, to go down to the central market, of the city of Pompeii.
But it may also be that, she was literate.
And that she wants to underscore the fact that, she was literate.
It may also be, that this was just a
set way of representing women in portraiture in Pompeii.
Because this is not the only portrait we have, of a woman
with her stylus to her lips and her tablets in her hands.
Here's another portrait that we have, also from Pompeii, with a woman represented, in
exactly the same way. This portrait is from house 7260 and
dates to around, 62 to 79 AD. The portrait of a woman
and presumably, her husband by her side. She again, has the stylus to her lips.
She has the tablet down below.
You can see that he holds a scroll, which has a a red place marker up above.
So this portrait of the two of them may
either elude to the fact that they are both literate,
that they can both read and write.
It's also possible that the that the scroll that
he ho, holds may indicate, that he's a magistrate.
Or, lastly, and one of the more popular solutions is that this may, he maybe
holding the marriage certificate, the marriage between the two.
The portraits are very interesting.
You can see that she isn't quite as gorgeous, as her other counterpart.
Her hair is not arranged in those wonderful golden locks.
But looks kind of frizzy over her forehead and down her neck.
As you can see here, her ears stick out,
she has a uni brow, but she's, she's, she's more
than happy to be represented as she was, preserved for
posterity, as she was along with her husband over here.
And if you look at the portrait, you will see
again, that it has a black frame around it, and then a maroon
frame, which tells us, again, that this was inserted into a wall, a third
or fourth style wall, just like the mythological paintings were inserted, into
those walls, as a, as a painting, that was located in the center of that wall.
And in this case, emphasized the, the owners of this particular house, and
their their undying love for each other, their relationship honors
their marriage, and served, you know, as the kind of counterpart,
to a portrait of the loving couple that one might put
on a mantelpiece or on a piano in one's house today.
So you have to think of it as, quite comparable to that.
Again, when you wander through Pompeii, you don't see many
of these portraits in situ in large part because they were
so popular with treasure hunters.
But fortunately, we do have a few preserved in from both Pompeii
and Herculaneum and those can be seen in museums like Naples, today.
Thank you.
