Part of my study abroad trip to London and Rome in September is a series of blog posts about the things we see and do while on the trip. This is the first of six required posts about Rome and is about a work of art I saw at the Museo Nazionale.
On the upper floor of the Museo Nazionale at Palazzo Massimo is a small room set off to the side. In that room are a pair of padded benches, and upon its walls are a fresco that dates back to between 30-20 BCE. Taken from the villa of Livia Drusilla, the wife of Augustus, the fresco is simply stunning.
According to a note at the exhibit, the colors it was painted with were such that depending on the time of day and angle of sunlight different accents would be noticed and the feeling of the scene would shift.
A far cry from some of the ancient mosaics and nature paintings I’d seen elsewhere, here the plants were depicted in such a way that even more than a thousand years later I could recognize things that had grown in that garden.
My photographs do not do it justice.
