Antiquities Exhibits

From the 1st century BCE onwards, the Roman army began to deploy "barbarians" to protect Roman frontiers. This trend continued into the Imperial Period and the expanded borders necessitated the use of increasing numbers of foederati to defend the empire.  By the 4th century CE, of more than 75,000 troops stationed in Gaul, most hailed from Germania, an area stretching as far north as Scandinavia and as far east as the Vistula River.   Fortunately for historians, the grave goods of these Germanic warriors both in and outside the empire have provided a treasure trove of information about the money, gifts, and often elaborately decorated military insignia these men acquired during their service to Rome.   "Promises of Roman citizenship and military and economic support encouraged barbarian leaders to assist their wealthy neighbor, primarily by providing troops," observes Melanie Holcomb in her paper, Barbarians and Romans, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Ar...

The Painters of Pompeii: Roman Frescoes from the National Archaeological Museum, Naples will open June 26, 2021 at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.  It will be on display until October 17, 2021. Tickets will be available on a timed entry basis with limited capacity to ensure adequate social distancing.  Although masks are encouraged, they are not required for fully vaccinated visitors.  Eighty artifacts and artworks from Pompeii and Herculaneum will be presented. During the exhibition, the museum plans to host a series of lectures in the Noble Theater with several of the most renowned scholars in the field of Ancient Roman Art and History.  Topics include the rediscovery of Pompeii, Food & Wine in Pompeii, Roman Painting, and Powerful Elite Women in Imperial Rome. The exhibit notice says its appearance at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art will be its only US presentation. Image: Polyphemus hears of the arrival of Galatea (or Hercules and Omphale), ancient Roman fre...

This rectangular panel is the foot end of a coffin from Roman Egypt.  It was originally connected to the rest of the coffin through dowels placed in the various holes around the perimeter. The unpainted edges of the panel were likely covered up when the coffin was whole. The scene depicts a funerary banquet in which the deceased is enjoying life in the next world. It reflects Graeco-Roman iconography to which various elements of ancient Egyptian iconography have been added.  The central figure is the deceased who reclines on the funerary couch or bed.  The wing and the floral wreath worn on the head indicate the successful passage of the deceased to the Afterlife. At the head of the bed is a dancing figure playing the double flute (aulos).  The flute player stands on a base in the shape of an Egyptian shrine decorated with a cavetto cornice and sun disc with pendant uraeii snakes.  Below is depicted a female figure holding two vertical snakes. She is a protectiv...

During the Ptolemaic period a distinctive type of subterranean tomb for multiple burials proliferated in the cemeteries around the city of Alexandria. Underground chambers cut into the living rock radiated from a central courtyard open to the sky. Most chambers contained a number of loculi, long narrow niches cut into the walls, which served as burial slots. Some loculi were sealed with painted limestone slabs in the form of small shrines. Here, a lively depiction of a man trying to bridle a horse, while a boy stands behind him, commemorates a man from Thessaly in Northern Greece, who must have been one of the many foreigners who congregated in the wealthy, cosmopolitan Ptolemaic capital. - Metropolitan Museum of Art Image: Painted limestone funerary slab with a man controlling a rearing horse 2nd half of 3rd century B.C.E. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

As often happens, when I was looking for images to illustrate my Ancient Wisdom post yesterday and came across that endearing painting of a little boy frightening his little brother with a Roman tragic mask by Belgian painter Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans, I noticed that despite his prolific body of work, Coomans did not have a biography on English Wikipedia  so I spent all day yesterday and this morning researching and writing a biography for him including a gallery of his work. I discovered he had a very eventful life. His work was already exhibition quality by the time he was 16 years old. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he was commissioned by Queen Marie-Louise to accompany Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud to Algeria where he spent several years as a military painter. Then he was dispatched to the Crimean War serving on the staff of General Aimable Pélissier. He eventually contracted cholera on the battlefield and went to Greece, Turkey, and Italy to recup...

Poppea Brings the Head of Octavia to Nero by G. Muzzioli, 1876, in a private collection. Octavia was the only daughter of the Emperor Claudius by marriage to his third wife, Valeria Messalina. She was named for her great-grandmother Octavia the Younger, the second eldest and full-blooded sister of the Emperor Augustus. She was born in Rome around 39 or 40, shortly before the assassination of Caligula.  As a young girl, her father betrothed her to future praetor Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus, who was a descendant of Augustus.  After her mother, Messalina, was executed for conspiring to murder her father, Agrippina arranged for Octavia to marry Nero. Although Octavia was admired as empress by the Roman citizen body and viewed as an 'aristocratic and virtuous wife' (according to Tacitus), Nero hated her and tried on several occasions to strangle her (according to Suetonius).  When Poppaea became pregnant with Nero's child, Nero divorced Octavia claiming she was barren a...