The primary subject of this chapter is the extensive ensemble of Second Style paintings found at two major ’Vesuvian’ villas: that of Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale and the Villa of Oplontis in Torre Annunziata. Together with our team of researchers, we were intensely involved in several international projects both in meticulously examining and analysing the organisation and decor of these villas, as well as creating highly detailed virtual reality 3D models of them. The chapter draws extensively upon the results of such research and work. We discuss further the striking relationship between the atrium paintings at Oplontis and the structural pattern of the scaenae frons, including that at the Large Theatre of Pompeii itself.

This chapter moves from painting to ’practice’. A particularly striking example both of theatricalised domestic space and activity is seen in the layout and decoration of dining rooms (triclinia), and in the range of entertainments presented within them. We examine how, responding to changes in the political, cultural and economic conditions of Roman society during this period, these private triclinium spaces and their decorative schemes were often systematic adaptations drawing upon the continuously evolving public discourse generated by theatrical entertainments. The chapter describes the range and nature of presentations that took place within the house, primarily as part of the dinner entertainments. Our focus is upon the likely venues as well as the decor of these spaces, and how, in combination, they created highly theatricalised and richly suggestive settings for performance and its reception. We include a detailed case study of the Pompeian House of Marcus Lucretius, detailing how these elements have been synthesised through the deployment of a pervasive theatricalism to create a highly appropriate setting for visitors as they move through its various rooms and spaces

This chapter explores the question of how erotic tenderness was represented pictorially in early Imperial art. The pinakes from cubicula B and D in the Villa della Farnesina in Rome (ca. 20s BCE) are among the earliest surviving tender representations of lovers to have been found in Roman domestic spaces. Since the villa’s discovery in the late nineteenth century, these frescoes have prompted numerous interpretations, mostly of a moralizing, biographical bent. Instead of focusing on the ultimately unanswerable question of who might have owned this splendid residence, the argument presents these well-known wall paintings as expressions of a contemporary cultural phenomenon, namely the formation of a new romantic ideal. Close readings of key passages from Latin love elegy help to situate these images within a larger concomitant debate on privacy and domesticity. This chapter also traces the diffusion of the Roman ideal of amatory tenderness beyond the capital and the court. Two first-century wall paintings from Pompeii, one from the House of Caecilius Jucundus and the other from the House of Lucretius Fronto, demonstrate how quickly this new romantic ideal was absorbed into Roman familial ideology and became emblematic of widespread socio-cultural aspirations.