FRESCO FRAGMENT WITH MAENAD, C. 30 BCE. MUSEO BARRACCO The archaeologist Ludwig Pollak (1868-1943) was the trusted expert of and buyer for the rich senator Baron Giovanni Barracco, who built up a significant collection of antiquities. Among the pieces he acquired for Barracco was this fresco of a Maenad with a goat, of which his notebooks make a terse reference in 1907. In fact this is not, strictly speaking, a fresco, as it is clearly painted on dry plaster with plenty of evidence of pigment loss. We also don't know its provenance, though earlier that year Pollak had bought a fresco of a Hermaphrodite in Capua, and this too could be Campanian. A graceful Maenad is walking toward the right, her beautiful profile evoking Greek vase painting or, indeed the frescoes from the villa of Agrippa and Julia. The Maenad, in a flowing yellow stola, is firmly gripping the horn of a goat which is preceding her. I fear the goat may not see another sunrise.

#FrescoFriday brings us to the #MuseoBarracco in #Rome, where a fragment of a wall painting a secco suggests a #Dionysiac event later on, and the #goat she's bringing may be doomed to a wild #sparagmos, a "rending limb from limb". (No goats were harmed in making this post.) #AncientBluesky 🏺

FRESCO WITH MALLARD, C. 350-360 CE. MUSEO BARRACCO During the creation of the main modern east-west artery of late C19 Rome, corso Vittorio Emanuele II, the early C16 palazzo Le Roy was heavily altered, its garden demolished, and a new entrance was made from an ersatz Renaissance raised terrace, under which a strange ancient space was found. Part of a peristyle was excavated which had clearly led a changing existence: a mensa ponderaria or standard measuring table shared space with a large rectangular marble basin. Inside the peristyle, which had been partially enclosed after its construction, fragments of frescoes were found, of which this scene is one. A red wall has a dark rectangular frame containing a marsh scene of a female mallard with a wriggling snake in its beak, in an economically sketched-in marsh.

A rather wonderful lady #mallard with a #snake in her beak charms us this #FrescoFriday. It comes from an odd, hard-to-classify building under the #MuseoBarracco and is one of a number of water-themed #frescoes from the same mysterious site. #AncientBluesky 🏺

STATUETTE OF PAN, C2? MUSEO BARRACCO This small white marble statuette has a movement and a monumentality belied by its size. In fact it is altogether unusual. The goatish smiling god is turning his head upward and to his right, and in his long beard we can see, surely an optical illusion, another face, as if the sculptor had changed his mind. He stands in contrapposto, his weight on his right leg, and his torso is shown turning as he moves his right arm toward his left shoulder. His left arm, heavily muscled, hangs relaxed by his side. It's broken above the elbow and the hand is missing. The forward-stepping left leg was also broken and reattached, and both lower legs, with goat hoofs, were lost. As often happens with the randy Pan, he has an erection that snakes along his left leg over a hefty scrotum. But a closer look at Pan's stomach shows a vestigial upright erection, in low relief as if the sculptor later decided to make it part of Pan's pubes. Though it's possible that this piece dates from Hadrian's or Trajan's reigns, its movement could also suggest a C16 imitation of a Pan statue "all'antico" which compares favourably with the Ludovisi "Michelangelo" Pan (not by Michelangelo but certainly influenced by him, and probably late C16).

#PhallusThursday gives us a chance to look at a #statuette of #Pan that used to be behind a grate in the library of the #MuseoBarracco in #Rome. It's dated vaguely as "Imperial period" and has no provenance. But it has a muscular energy and pentimenti that evoke #Michelangelo. #AncientBluesky 🏺