This exceptional polychrome wall painting fragment depicts the bust of a winged female figure, perhaps a siren, emerging from acanthus scrolls. The wings were delicately painted with great attention to detail.
Frescoes are the best-preserved form of Roman painting. Aimed at decorating and making well-to-do homes more comfortable, wall painting was a ubiquitous visual element of the lives of the Roman élite and proves an unparalleled resource for the study of their artistic tastes and concerns. Wall painters from Rome probably worked around the Italian peninsula, travelling with models and copybooks. Painters favoured mythological figures for their decorative qualities, such as the siren depicted in this fragment.
Width: 4.73 inches (12 cm)
Provenance:
From a European collection formed in the nineteenth century or earlier, based on the custom-made tooled leather box. Compare another fragment kept in a case of similar manufacture and with a label reading "Fragment de Pompéi provenant de la vente Préat 1868", Sotheby's New York, 12 December 2013, Antiquities sale, lot 84.
Subsequently with Mitsukoshi department store, Nihonbashi, Tokyo, by 1974. Probably exhibited as part of the International Art exhibition series between 1974 and 1978, cf. exhibition photographs.
£20000