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Wail-Paintings from Fenchurch Street, City of London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Michael Rhodes
Michael Rhodes
Affiliation:
Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London.
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Extract

The 1983 excavations at 6–12 Fenchurch Street produced several thousand pieces of painted wall plaster, which were recovered from the debris of a clay and timber domestic building destroyed in the Hadrianic fire. A full report on the plaster is to be prepared in due course, but two portions are of exceptional interest, and deserve immediate publication.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 18 , November 1987 , pp. 169 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Michael Rhodes 1987. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Excavations supervised by Friederike Hammer for the Museum of London Department of Urban Archae ology. For site location, see Frere, S.S., ‘Roman Britain in 1983. I. Sites Explored’ Britannia xv (1984), 308.Google Scholar

2 The writer would like to record his gratitude to Ian Betts, Gill Barnard and Richenda Goffin for restoring the plaster, to Sue Mitford for the water-colour illustrations, to Friederike Hammer for site details, to Dr J.P. Wild, Tony McKenna and Roger Ling for useful correspondence, comments, references and discussions, and to Tony Dyson for reading the draft of this paper.

3 Daremberg, C. and Saglio, E., Dictionnaire des Antiquités (Paris, 1887).Google Scholar For Pompeian examples, with high girdle and cloak see Roux Aine, H., Herculanum et Pompei IV (Paris, 1861) fig. 39. opp. p. 110Google Scholar; fig 11, opp. p. 49, respectively.

4 Daremberg and Saglio, op. cit. (note 3), and for a Pompeian example, see the Providence in Roux Aine, op. cit. (note 3), fig. 76, opp. p. 153.

5 Allag, C. in Barbet, A. (ed.), La Peinture murale Romaine dans les Provinces de l'Empire B.A.R. Int. Ser. 165 (Oxford, 1983) 192, fig. 11.6.Google Scholar

6 N. Davey and R. Ling, Wall-Painting in Roman Britain Britannia Monograph 3 (1982).

7 These comprise a winged head of Mercury, see Roach Smith, C., Illustrations of Roman London (printed for the subscribers, London 1859) pl. XIV, No. 3Google Scholar; the head of a figure rising from a calix, ibid., pl. XIII, No. 8; a small nude male figure ibid., 62; two dancing female figures or nymphs(?), see Lethaby, W.R., Londinium. The Arts and Crafts (London, 1923) 171 and 173, fig. 117Google Scholar; and a cupid, see Frere, op. cit. (note 1), 311, fig. 20.

8 Southwark: Frere, op. cit. (note 1); Leicester: Davey and Ling, op. cit. (note 6), fig. 26, No. 22(B); Pompeii; Cf. Aine op. cit. (note 3), I, figs. 1–2, 3, 9, etc.

9 B.M. Felletti Maj and P. Moreno, Le Pitture Della Casa Delle Muse Monumenti Della Pittura Antica Scoperti in Italia. Ostia, Fase. Ili (Instituto Poligrafico Dello Stato, 1967), esp. Tav. III.

10 Cf. pedestals depicted on a wall-painting in the House of the Vetti, Pompeii, shown by Schefold, K., Vergessenes Pompeji (Bern, 1962), pl. 14, 1.Google Scholar

11 Leicester: Davey and Ling, op. cit. (note 6), pl. L; Pompeii: Ward Perkins, J. and Claridge, A., Pompeii. AD 79 (London, 1976) No. 120Google Scholar, and Cf. also a long-haired mask from Pompeii, unprovenanced, shown by K. Schefold, op. cit. (note 10), 149, 2.

12 Davey and Ling, op. cit. (note 6), 169f., pl. LXXXI.

13 Frere, op. cit. (note 1), 310–11, fig. 20. The main building was built C. A.D. 120; the painting comes from a later extension, and has been dated by Roger Ling on stylistic criteria to the mid or late 2nd century A.D.

14 Kelsey, F.W. (trans.), Mau, A., Pompeii. Its Life and Art (London, 1899), 446–74Google Scholar; Gassiot-Talabot, G., Roman and Palaeo-Christian Painting (Lausanne, 1965), 25–6.Google Scholar

15 Davey and Ling, op. cit. (note 6), pl. XCVI.

16 ibid., 32.