Pompeii, Doomed Metropolis, Comes Alive, and in Glorious Color, Through a Portal on East 84th Street
These frescoes disclose the love affair of Rome with Athens, and the overwhelming influence of Greek culture on the imagination of the elites whose homes were adorned with them.
Step into a stately townhouse on East 84th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and you’ll quickly find yourself transported to an extinct city on Italy’s Mediterranean coast, nestled at the base of a volcano. Like Troy and Mohenjo-daro, Pompeii is an absent presence in the history of civilization.
“Pompeii in Color,” curated by Clare Fitzgerald and open until May 29 at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, is a portal to that doomed metropolis, which in year 79 of the common era was stilled by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Many of these works usually reside at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, but have traveled to New York as ambassadors from a vanished place.
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