Roman Portraits and Wall Painting

Romans wanted portraits that looked like real people. In the late Republic (the 100s and 1st century BC), many marble portrait heads of older men show every wrinkle, sag and bony cheek. This style is called verism, from the Latin for "true." The wrinkles were a point of pride: they stood for experience, seriousness and service to the state. (Under the emperors, official portraits became smoother and more idealized.)

Looking closely: A couple from Pompeii. A man and a woman look straight at us, side by side, painted on the wall of their house. She holds a stylus to her lips and a folding wax tablet; he holds a scroll. Those props say "we can read and write," a sign of status. Their faces are individual, with real features: her thick, meeting eyebrows, his short beard and tanned skin. Shading on cheeks and noses makes the heads round. The house is identified as Terentius Neo's from painted notices outside it, but who the couple were is not certain.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, ash buried Pompeii and nearby towns, preserving hundreds of wall paintings. Many walls were painted to look like something else: colored marble, columns, windows onto distant views.

Looking closely: Livia's garden room. This room was half underground, a cool retreat for the wife of the emperor Augustus. All four walls were painted as a garden: a low fence, then a lawn, then trees and bushes heavy with fruit and flowers, with birds flying among them under a blue sky. The near plants are sharp; the far ones are hazier and bluer. You seem to stand in an open garden rather than in a closed room.