Villa of the Mysteries Second Style Wall Painting Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, Ita

Villa of the Mysteries Second Style Wall Painting Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, Italy, ca. 60–50 bceThehouses and villas around Mount Vesuvius  have yielded a treasuretrove of mural paintings, the most complete record of the changingfashions in interior decoration found anywhere in the ancient world.The sheer quantity of these paintings tells a great deal about boththe prosperity and the tastes of the times. How many homes today,even of the very wealthy, have custom-painted murals in nearly everyroom?After80 BCE there was a new approach to mural design- known as the SecondStyle. The Second Style is in most respects the antithesis ofthe First Style which emulated masonry. Some scholars have arguedthat the Second Style also has precedents in Greece, but most believeit is a Roman invention. Certainly, the Second Style evolved in Italyand was popular until around 15 BCE, when Roman painters introducedthe Third Style. Second Style painters did not aim to create theillusion of an elegant marble wall, as First Style painters sought todo. Rather, they wanted to dissolve a room’s confining walls andreplace them with the illusion of an imaginary three-dimensionalworld.Anearly example of the new style is the room that gives its name to theVilla of the Mysteries at Pompeii. Many scholars believe this chamberwas used to celebrate, in private, the rites of the Greek godDionysos (Roman Bacchus). Dionysos was the focus of an unofficialmystery religion popular among women in Italy at this time. Theprecise nature of the Dionysiac rites is unknown, but the figuralcycle in the Villa of the Mysteries, illustrating mortals (all femalesave for one boy) interacting with mythological figures, probablyprovides some evidence for the cult’s initiation rites. In theserites young women, emulating Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, unitedin marriage with Dionysos. (x) -- source link

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