El incendio de Roma: la verdad detrás de Nerón y su ambición
#Roma #Nerón #Historia #ImperioRomano #HistoriaOscura #DomusAurea

FRESCO OF THE WATER BRIDGE, 65-68 CE. DOMUS AUREA The cryptoporticus of the Oppian pavilion of Nero's Golden House is 60 metres long and 6 metres tall. It runs along the edge of the bedrock of the Oppian hill. Despite its position at the back of the palace, it's richly frescoed, probably by the palace's famed artist Fabullus. This detail of the huge frescoed space shows the underside of the bridge that carried water across the cryptoporticus to feed a fountain in the Octagonal Hall. The whole room is decorated with delicate frames against a white background and the bridge is no different. At centre within a strangely incomplete frame is a scene with a hippocamp and a sort of nautical centaur with a crown and staff. The sound of flowing water pouring over the bridge would draw attention, the gaze would lift, and the eye would confirm the presence of marine divinities.

#FrescoFriday in the #DomusAurea of #Nero takes us into the immense #cryptoporticus, which is divided by this bridge. It carried water down into the central bay of the great Octagonal Hall, and its #fresco decoration is a delicate series of #frames and nautical motifs. #AncientBluesky 🏺

In de #verenigdesatan bouwt #Trump een #domusaurea. Zoals keizer #nero deed.

#kimjongtrump #agentkrasnow

#RomaSotterranea
#ColleOppio
#DomusAurea
#casadiNerone

Looks like Nero’s house. #DomusAurea

VAULTED STUCCO CEILING, C. 90-100 CE. DOMUS OF SAN CLEMENTE We are in a wealthy domus of the late Flavian or early Antonine era which was built on the site of a house destroyed in the Great Fire of 64 CE after this land was returned to private use following its incorporation in the grounds of the Domus Aurea. Only part of the domus has been excavated, including a summer triclinium, semi-buried and decorated with coral to simulate a cave, which was transformed along with the rest of the house into a Mithraic cult centre in the C3. This room, directly in front of the triclinium/Mithraic banqueting hall, still has its delicate C1 stucco ceiling, once richly painted. It is a series of framed squares around a rectangle, at back, with a stucco bird or flower in each square. The rectangle seems to have a candelabrum at its centre. Further toward us, a large square is framed with hexagons, each with a flower at the centre. This must have been a magnificent ceiling in its time.

For #ReliefWednesday we've gone down, down, deep under the C12 basilica of #SanClemente in #Rome, to find a little taste of post- #DomusAurea luxury in a #ceiling of low #relief #stucco from the end of the reign of #Domitian or perhaps the brief interval of #Nerva. #AncientBluesky 🏺

THE GOLDEN VAULT, C. 2014. DOMUS AUREA The 3D reconstruction of this ceiling relies much more heavily on Francesco de Hollanda than on Vincenzo Brenna. The palette is rich with colours again and the figures are back. But Brenna's reconstruction reverberates in the greater balance between blue and red. The scallops have become bunched draperies. The central roundel has a single figure with a Cupid in the air. All this, one presumes, is based on a close study of the remaining paint. But the thing that so struck the visiting artists of the C15 and C16 is now barely noticeable: this vault is barely golden.

Finally, in the virtual reality reconstruction of the Golden Vault today visible in the #DomusAurea, we have a properly scientific version teeming with figures, colour, and a lot of guesswork, but the #fresco decoration has never been more convincing. #AncientBluesky 🏺

VINCENZO BRENNA. THE GOLDEN VAULT, 1786-1788 Left to his own devices, and at the apex of his success as a printmaker, Vincenzo Brenna revisited the Room of the Golden Vault a decade after his labours with Franciszek Smuglewicz, and the results are ever more distant from Francisco de Hollanda's as a canon of neoclassicism came to be imposed on Roman painting. Yes, Pompeii had been discovered, but not yet thoroughly excavated; and in any case one would expect an imperial palace in the heart of the capital to be more stately and dignified than houses in the vulgar provinces, no? So the "garish" red cinnabar, now almost a memory, gives way to imperial blue. The palette has been incredibly simplified and we are extremely distant from the original. Figural spaces are kept to a minimum, though in Brenna's defence the ceiling had further deteriorated.

The same artist, #VincenzoBrenna, went back to the vexed issue of reconstructing the Golden Vault and found he hadn't been #neoclassical enough. Out with the red, in with the blue, and the #DomusAurea would doubtless have been filled with pristine #white #statues. #AncientBluesky 🏺

VINCENZO BRENNA AND FRANCISZEK SMUGLEWICZ. THE GOLDEN VAULT, 1777 Vincenzo Brenna and Franciszek Smuglewicz, the latter from Lithuanian Poland, worked together on a series of colour plates of frescoes from the Domus Aurea. Brenna was working on commission from an agent of Clement XIII Rezzonico and Smuglewicz assisted him. Both were in love with neoclassicism, and it is interesting to compare this reconstruction with that of Francisco de Hollanda. The first thing we notice is that most of the figural scenes have vanished, in large part due to the visible fresco work in this room having been gravely comprised by damp. The second thing is that the backgrounds are now roughly equally divided between red and blue. Third, the central scene has been simplified and set on a white background. The scallop shapes around the centre have been turned into golden scallops, whereas de Hollanda made them black, possibly imagining them as a continuation of the black background of his central roundel.

#FrescoFriday carries on with the Golden Vault in the #DomusAurea in #Rome. In the later C18 the reconstructions of the #stucco and #fresco #ceiling became more simple, not only due to ongoing decay of the original but also due to the taste for #neoclassicism. #AncientBluesky 🏺

FRANCISCO DE HOLLANDA. THE GOLDEN VAULT, 1538. The brilliant young Portuguese artist Francisco de Hollanda was only 21 when he descended into the "grottoes" of the Domus Aurea. Despite the gaps in the ceiling that we see today, he was able to reconstruct the gilded stucco frames, the grounds predominantly in red cinnabar with some greens, blues, and blacks, notably the black scalloped eye shapes around the central roundel. Much more of the stucco and fresco work survived in 1538 than it does now, but his reconstruction of the central scene (Admetus and Alcestis?) is entirely imaginary. He was probably right to reconstruct the four smaller roundels as scenes floating against a dark background, similar to work from the same period as at Pompeii, which had not yet been discovered. The brightness and strength of the colours is also similar to that from the Vesuvian area, but, though correct, was considered "un-Roman" subsequently.

The first colour-conscious attempt at re-imagining the intact state of the #fresco work in this important room in the #DomusAurea was made in the C16 by the young #Portuguese artist #FranciscodeHollanda. Much more of the vault was still intact then, despite the huge losses. #AncientBluesky 🏺

HALL OF THE GOLDEN VAULT, 65-68 CE. DOMUS AUREA When Nero's last palace, the massive Domus Aurea, was rediscovered in the late C15, this hall, axially aligned with the centre of one of the two pentagonal recesses of the façade of the pavilion on the Oppian hill, was still decorated with gold leaf on some of the stucco. One huge hole dug in from above came from explorers, the smaller one from a medieval well. This room, despoiled by Trajan of its opus sectile wall panels and floor, was filled with earth. However, much more of its decoration survived in the C16, and the artist Francisco de Hollanda tried to reconstruct it in drawing based on what remained. It is a complex ceiling of stucco frames enclosing rectangular scenes, with roundels that probably had figurative frescoes in them as well. At centre a huge roundel, now entirely lost, contained the ceiling's main image. As we will see, this ceiling became a battleground for competing forms of classical reception.

#FrescoFriday this week dives into one of the most famous #ceilings of #Nero's #DomusAurea: the #GoldenVault, buried under the #Oppian Hill in #Rome. It's an excellent case study in #classicalreception over five centuries. So let's dig in! #AncientBluesky 🏺

ACHILLES AT SCYROS, 65-68 CE. DOMUS AUREA This is the most famous fresco in Nero's Golden House, because it's the best preserved. It shows the famous scene in the Iliad where Achilles is cross-dressing to hide among the women of the palace of Lycomedes on the island of Scyros to avoid the call-up to go to fight at Troy, but is discovered when Odysseus sets out gifts for the household. The women all rush for the dresses but Achilles grabs weapons and a shield, thereby revealing himself. We see him at centre, heroically nude, wuth the king's daughter Deidameia clinging to him at left as he raises his shield. He does end up going to Troy but not before getting Deidameia pregnant with his horribly precocious son Neoptolemus whom he never meets. Not the first or the last deadbeat dad in ancient mythology. The rest of the ceiling is a complex series of painted stucco frames and small figures against a white background.

#FrescoFriday takes us back underneath the #Oppian Hill to the #DomusAurea of #Nero in the heart of #Rome to admire the incomplete but magnificent ceiling of the Hall of #Achilles at #Scyros, one of the most splendid ceiling compositions surviving from #antiquity. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Argh! I wish I’d seen that when I was there!! #DomusAurea

📸 Un raro fragmento de pigmento azul egipcio encontrado en el palacio Domus Aurea de Nerón, en Roma / Parque Arqueológico del Coliseo / Foto de Simona Murrone

#️⃣ #Arqueología #RomaAntigua #DomusAurea #Nerón #PigmentoEgipcio #ArteRomano #HistoriaDelArte

#honorbound #aethyr #aethyria #aethyrian #dragon #dragoness #fantasy #OC #originalcharacter #art #reference #referencesheet #sun #stars #DomusAurea

Forgot dem tags

2,4 kg : c’est le poids d’un #lingot coloré d’un “bleu égyptien” découvert lors de fouilles archéologiques à la #DomusAurea. Cet immense palais était celui de l’empereur Néron, personnage connu pour ses ambitions démesurées.
© Parco archeologico del Colosseo, foto di Simona Murrone.

RELIEF HEAD OF A SATYR, EARLY C2. DOMUS TIBERIANA This white marble relief head of a satyr, missing the upper part above the eyes, was found in the excavations of the Domus Tiberiana, which, despite its name, is Neronian with Trajanic and Hadrianic expansions. The palace functioned principally as a centre for the imperial bureaucracy, but there are also religious traces, from Egyptian cult images (from under Nero, Domitian, Hadrian, and especially the Severan emperors) to Dionysiac elements like this satyr head, found in an area containing other pieces related to Dionysus, including a splendid tiger in fiorito alabaster inset with black marble stripes, possibly relating to the god's triumph over the Indians. The satyr head is magnificently carved, the satyr's beard a thicket of dense curls, his lips smiling mockingly to reveal his teeth, his eyes deep-set and goatish. It is interesting to imagine religious areas within this complex where imperial bureaucrats could worship privately.

#ReliefWednesday offers us a wonderful smirking satyr face from a #Dionysiac space in the bureaucratic #DomusTiberiana, from the early C2 CE. #Tiberius neither built nor lived in the palace bearing his name on the #Palatine in #Rome - in fact it was part of #Nero's #DomusAurea.

New section of Emperor Nero's 'Golden House' reopens - Sight Magazine A section of Ancient Roman Emperor Nero's vast underground Domus Aurea (Golden House) has been reopened to the public.

New section of Emperor Nero’s ‘Golden House’ reopens @sightmagazine.bsky.social #EmperorNero #GoldenHouse #DomusAurea #GoldenHouse #Rome #RomanEmpire

sightmagazine.com.au/news/new-sec...

OFFERING TO DIONYSUS, 62-79 CE. MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO NAZIONALE DI NAPOLI The terrible earthquake of 62 CE, which was followed by a swarm of lesser tremors until the devastating volcanic explosion of 79, did have one positive aspect: it encouraged the wealthy citizens of Pompeii to redecorate using the most modern painted stucco techniques of the Fourth Style, finding their model in Nero's Domus Aurea. Here, in a panel from the north wall of the House of Meleager, we can see the influence of the polychrome stucco façade of the Domus Aurea, with its aedicules and painted figures. The theme of this panel, of which we see a part, is the worship of Dionysus, who features in the central section of the panel out of frame at right. Instead, this detail shows a male figure nude but for his blue chlamys, holding an offering tray. Is he hoping that the fish in the tympanum above him will fall onto it? This kind of decoration was usually only found in public buildings, and it must have dazzled visitors to this private house. There's plenty of other action in this panel: at lower left, a satyr holding a bucket of grapes is emerging from a door in a red wall painted with a garland and a hippocamp. Below the male offerer is a red panel with a nude male approaching a figure holding a sceptre and sitting on an orb, and at upper left a stucco figure (a maenad?) is reclining against a delicate green background, holding an amphora. Erotes are hunting against blue backgrounds, and everything is meant to delight and astonish the eye, playing games with levels of realism. Are the stucco figures more "real" than the painted ones? Is the offerer more "real" than the painted panel above which he is standing?

#FrescoFriday brings us a theatrical scene in this work in #stucco and #fresco from #Pompeii via #Naples. Doors are opening, figures are dancing, #polychromy is everywhere, and this gives us an idea of what the façade of the #DomusAurea in #Rome must have been like.

🔥 Rome’s Golden Secret 🔥
After the Great Fire of 64 AD, Nero built the Domus Aurea—a 300-acre palace of gold, mosaics, and excess. A symbol of tyranny, it was buried after his fall.
Today, its remains lie hidden beneath Rome. Dive into the story!
#AncientRome #DomusAurea #HistoryShorts