In a window, the cast of the dog still attached to the chain when the black sky fell to earth growls his “Cave Vitam” twisted in pain powerless. Entering the dark entrance of the exhibition “Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum” at the British Museum, which is open until September 29, we slip into a vivid daydream.
Sure, you say that Pompeii is not surprising Italian eyes. It ‘sa bit like the story of the Hassidic rabbi of Krakow that goes to Prague in search of a treasure seen in a dream. In the place where he was to be buried the chest, is a guard who tells him that she dreamed of a treasure under the hearth of a rabbi of Krakow. So go home and find the gold. If not that our treasure is falling apart and to see someone who believes you have to come to London.
Exposure introduces a film about the end of the two Roman cities which is probably the only thing objectionable. Beautiful the graphics and reconstruction, horribly topical inserts daily life today who aspire to make the bells today as direct descendants of Pompeii. Meatball pseudo-historical drowned in sauce exotic: indigenous un’Italietta 50s. But is this true?
The exhibition is divided into a partial reconstruction of the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii. Before you enter, do not miss on a small monitor the vivid virtual tour of the house was. Named for the mosaic that was between the atrium and the garden, with the scene of the rehearsal of a satyr chorus, is not the most magnificent building but it is perfectly emblematic.
Contained the mosaic stravisto dog chain with the inscription “Cave Canem” that even Santoro (you licet parva) used as the logo of his “Public Service”. Within its walls, the top 800 soon brought to light, Edward Bulwer-Lytton once set his famous novel “The Last Days of Pompeii”, in its turn inspired by the neo-classical-romantic painter’s canvas Bryullov that the writer English had seen in Milan.
In 79 AD, when the eruption of Vesuvius wiped out in one day the two cities, Rome was already in decline. But walking through the rooms, nestled among the objects of everyday life, a baked loaf twenty centuries ago and rediscovered in the ’30s, you can breathe a measurably human civilization, not demonized the pleasures and sentenced them to become monsters of the unconscious, but to all gave his place in a horizon where the limit was figure of beauty.
In a society that knew how sexual organ was more developed mind, the phallus was a symbol of power, abundance but also certain instrument of rich ironies. Played by the wind in our house there is a tintinnabulum from which emerge four bronze bells and an oil lamp.
The figure holding everything is a satyr with a huge “voluttuogeno.” Hercules returning from a spree is set in marble while herculean free libations. But the graffiti angrily plotted on a fresco of the alcove by a girl named Arius warn of Venus, showing the painful awareness of the transience of pleasure.
Convivial feasts of the mosaics and inscriptions on the statues takes shape a society where slaves were fully incorporated in families, not too different, dare presentation video, a maid today. A freed slave gave the family the herm of his benefactor Lucius Caecilius Iucundus: bronze head iperealistica, including warts.
From the marble plinth that holds up, check a foul unexpected bronze.
Women were not oppressed by men but they were on their side, as evidenced by the pair of realistic mosaic of the house of Terence Neo, the father of the house and the wife, or the impressive marble statue of the rich and powerful priestess of Venus, Eumachia.
In 1700, at the time of the first excavations, the Pompeian red walls inside, along with the so-called “fourth style” began to breed in the houses of the nobles from all over Europe, especially England. The fashion color shocking and grotesque lasted until the middle of 800. If it finds an example even now in late-eighteenth-century house “prazziana” by Sir John Soane in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London.
The dog at the beginning warned, however, that nothing lasts and colorful rooms of humanity lives it goes to the last part of the exhibition. Casts of some of the thousands of victims of the disaster writhing horror petrified while trying to escape. On the road, at home, in bed. Amazed in the face of death, without light and breath.