Black-Ground Fresco Fragment with Landscape in Tondo

One of a pair of Roman fresco panels (see also 72.AG.83) portraying seaside scenes. The two panels were originally part of the same wall. Each contains a tondo painted in an impressionistic manner, predominantly in shades of blue and green. This panel depicts a complex of seaside buildings before a wooded landscape. Steps from a colonnade lead down to an open area with figures. A fisherman sits on a dock supported by arches.This fresco fragment was part of a larger scheme of painted decoration for a wall in a wealthy home. The painting style, categorized by scholars as Fourth Style, is the last style of Roman wall painting, and combines the spatial vistas of the Second Style with the fantastic architecture of the Third Style. It was popular from approximately 63 B.C. until A.D. 79, when Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed. The houses excavated at those sites show that a panel like this one would have been a minor element of the wall's decoration, subsidiary to a large panel with a mythological or architectural motif.