For #MosaicMonday, two C2 CE opus vermiculatum #emblemata from #VillaAdriana, now in the #VaticanMuseums. Framed by late C18 borders, their true power lies in the #Roman theatre of illusion and the acute danger of dining with an emperor.
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For #SpoliaSunday, a touching memorial in the #Lateran #cloister. C16 bishop Giuliano Dati salvaged a #Roman cippus and a C13 #Vassalletto fountain basin, uniting them to serve his tomb. A tiny triumph of memory and the best kind of protective #spolia.
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When the conventual Lateran canons were replaced with secular Lateran canons, the old Vassalletto fountain-lavabo, a symbol of the monastic community, was no longer desired. The upper reservoir with its faces was consigned to the Lateran marble-yard until Dati rescued it.
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For #SarcophagusSaturday, the C3 CE Monte del Grano #sarcophagus and antiquarian hubris. Flaminio #Vacca and C16 restorers found a matrimonial lid but bizarrely decided it was emperor Alexander #Severus and his mother, recarving the marble faces to fit. #classicalreception
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For #FrescoFriday, the C3 CE #tauroctony from the #Barberini #mithraeum, found in 1936. Unlike usual marble #reliefs, this painted version uses colour and a #zodiac arch to frame the bull's #sacrifice as a celestial map of shifting #constellations.
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For #MosaicMonday, a C2-C3 CE pavement from the MArTa in #Taranto, made from local stone. The central panel features an intimate #Dionysiac scene of a #satyr and #nymph in a cave, complete with abandoned instruments. But is it #seduction, or #assault?
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The wider floor reveals the dark narrative key. Definitely assault. Placed directly below the mythological encounter is a #mosaic panel of brutal animal combat, a lion taking down a horse. The mosaicist's metaphor is clear: man is the most ferocious predator of all.
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For #SpoliaSunday, a C2 CE #column in the #Lateran cloister. When the C15 papacy moved to the #Vatican, the sidelined Lateran rebranded this architectural #spolia as the Temple column that split at Christ's death, an ingenious marketing ploy to draw pilgrims.
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For #SarcophagusSaturday, a C3 CE strigillated #sarcophagus plumbed as a #fountain at the Villa Medici. Ecstatic corner figures elevate it above mere plumbing. The #Dionysiac theme carries a #Renaissance joke: trickling water, like wine, stimulates the bladder.
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For #FrescoFriday, here is the first of three charming 70-100 CE fragments from a #domus on the #Quirinal hill. Found beneath the courtyard of the Baroque palazzo Pallavicini, they are now in palazzo Altemps. This industrious #Eros is scaling a ladder.
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The Quirinal was an elite residential neighbourhood before #Constantine built his massive baths over it in the C4. These surviving fragments are a brilliant reminder of the lighter, impressionistic side of #Roman domestic decoration before the area was built over.
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