Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Roman Landscapes

SAMA’s spring exhibition, Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii, brings exclusively to San Antonio more than sixty paintings and other works of art from the ancient Roman Empire—and many of them have never before been exhibited in the United States. The exhibition was six years in the making and will be on view until May 21. 

Here are a few things you may not know about Roman Landscapes:

I. The Mosaic with Plato's Academy is composed of thousands of tiny cut stones called tesserae, each less than an eighth of an inch across.

It is actually a floor mosaic, but we’re showing it on the wall in the exhibition gallery to make it easier for visitors to see its details. Although the entire mosaic is only about 34 inches square, it weighs more than 500 pounds! Its weight made it a challenge to install, and SAMA's resourceful exhibits team used a mechanical lift to raise it into place. 

A young guest asks a question about Mosaic with Plato's Academy.

II. Two of the marble cremation urns in the exhibition come from SAMA's own collection. The urn dedicated to T. Flavius Hierax once belonged to Pope Julius III, who displayed it in the gardens of his luxurious palace in Rome in the 1500s. 

Later, part of that palace's grounds, and along with them this urn, were incorporated into the property of the neighboring Villa Medici, which was owned by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, son of the famous Cosimo de' Medici of Florence.

III. The large garden painting from the House of the Golden Bracelet was excavated in 1979. Much of the upper portion of the painted plaster had fallen from the wall and broken into small fragments.

What you see today is the result of painstaking restoration by archaeological conservators who put the paintings back together piece by piece.

IV. Three paintings from the Villa San Marco showing trees on white backgrounds with small Egyptian scenes below were excavated in 1752.

As far as we know, they have not been exhibited in many years, and they have traveled to the United States for the first time for Roman Landscapes. 

V. Visitors to Roman Landscapes may be surprised to find traces here of ancient Egypt—but in fact, it’s not uncommon to see Egyptian subjects in paintings and other works of art from Roman Italy.

In the exhibition you can find eight crocodiles and two sphinxes, as well as devices used to irrigate farmland along the Nile. Painters working in Rome or Pompeii may not have visited Egypt in person, so their versions of Egyptian animals sometimes look strange to us! 

VI. The large marble sarcophagus, or coffin, lent by the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome once held a human burial, but it is now empty.

It was discovered in fragments near the Via Labicana southeast of Rome in an area of extensive ancient and modern tunneling to quarry pozzolana, which is used in making concrete. In ancient times, this area was a vast cemetery, and some of the quarry tunnels were reused as tombs.

Garland Sarcophagus with Sacrifice Scenes, mid-2nd century AD, marble, 20 7/8 x 87 3/8 x 24 16/16 in., Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano, 106429, By permission of the Ministero della Cultura - Museo Nazionale Romano - Palazzo Massimo. Further reproduction prohibited.

VII. The renowned painting of a solemn procession through a grove of trees from the tomb of a man named Patron traveled from the Louvre in Paris to the United States for the very first time for Roman Landscapes.

Patron’s tomb was excavated in 1842 by the Marquis Giampietro Campana. In 1861 the French government purchased Campana’s finds from the Tomb of Patron along with hundreds of other Greek and Roman artifacts from his collection.

VIII. The delicate cameo with a shepherd visiting a countryside shrine of the god Bacchus was a new acquisition for SAMA’s collection in 2022.

Its exquisite craftsmanship reveals the artist’s sense of humor, as a goat playfully rests his feet on the shepherd’s hands while turning to look at the god’s statue.

IX. The painting fragment with a landscape scene from the House of the Golden Bracelet in Pompeii that’s exhibited in Roman Landscapes was initially mounted on a heavy concrete support when it was discovered in the 1970s.

This fragment and several others from the same room were recently cleaned and given new mounts by conservators at the Centro Restauro Venario in Turin. You can watch their work in a video here: Affreschi dalla Casa del Bracciale d’Oro, Pompei, Insula Occidentalis

X. The silver drinking cups lent by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Princeton University Art Museum are displayed together in Roman Landscapes for the first time since entering their respective museums’ collections, but they were most likely made as a pair.

The cups have many similarities in their decoration and the same name, SISIMIS, is inscribed under the foot of each.

Cup with Bacchic ritual scenes, Roman, early 1st century A.D., silver and gold, 4 3/8 x 6 5/8 x 4 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Francis Warden Fund, Frank B. Bemis Fund, John H. and Ernestine Payne Fund and William E. Nickerson Fund, 1997.83, Photograph © 2020 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jessica Powers
The Gilbert M. Denman, Jr. Curator of Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World 

Lynley McAlpine
Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow