Myth and Nature”: nature is on exhibition in Pompeii – from March 16th

March 16th 2016 – September 30th 2016

After the success obtained at Palazzo Reale in Milan, the exhibition “Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii” come to the excavations of Pompeii and to the National Archeological Museum.

Readjusted for the new spaces which house it and enriched with more works, the history of nature in its different aspects and in a close relation with human interventions is enhanced by a path inside the archeological area of Pompeii, where green spaces of ancient “domus” have been restored and reopened.

The exhibition project is promoted by the Monuments and Fine Arts Office of Pompeii and by the National Archeological Museum of Naples with the collaboration of the publishing house Electa. It is curated by Gemma Sena Chiesa, Angela Pontrandolfo and Valeria Sampaolo as regards Naples and by Massimo Osanna, Grete Stefani and Michele Borgongino as regards Pompeii.

In this stage of the exhibition, not only frescoes, but also precious objects such as silverware and jewels, statues, crockery and vases express the perception of nature in the Greek and Roman worlds between the 8^th century BC and the 2^nd century AD and the diligent search for unity among architecture, painting and arrangement of green spaces.

Arranging gardens was an art closely related to frescoed walls and furnishings of rooms. In Pompeii, on the occasion of the exhibition, all these things are perceptible in a new itinerary including the visit of five “domus”: Praedia of Iulia Felix and the houses of Loreio Tiburtino, “Venere in conchiglia, “Frutteto” and Marco Lucrezio along Via Stabiana. They have been reopened thanks to the restoration carried out inside the project entitled “Grande Progetto Pompei”, in addition to the garden of “Casa degli Amorini dorati”, which can already be visited.

The section “Natura morta”, mounted in the Pyramid inside the Anphitheatre, is to be added to the new itinerary. This is a genre which originates in the Hellenistic Roman world with the representation of fruit and animals. For the first time the frescoes bearing these representations, removed in the past and guarded in the Museum of Naples, will be exhibited in Pompeii, as well as seeds, fruit and loaves – returned in their integrity by the ashes that covered them after the eruption of 79 AD – and plasters in a game of references both to painted nature and to its real models.

The landscape, The enchanted garden, The cultivated nature as gods’ gift, The space of nature and Nature as a sign are the themes illustrated by about 100 archeological relics on exhibition in the magnificent “Sundial Hall” (Sala della Meridiana), for the section of the exhibition in the National Archeological Museum of Naples. They are themes which, besides illustrating the relation between the ancient man and the environment, allow the visitors to focus on the artistic Magno-Greek production and in general on the Southern Italian, Hellenistic and Roman production.

“The exhibition, due to a precise scientific project, is not an end in itself, but it has been the occasion for admiring a large number of findings that are not usually exhibited in the Museum of Naples and a stimulus to definitively reopen the historical gardens of the building in order to offer the public a more and more pleasant experience”, tells Mr Paolo Giulierini, Director of the MANN, where the two inner gardens go back to flourishing again and in particular in the Eastern Garden a Roman garden will be reconstructed with a shady pergola of vines and roses and sculptural fragments.

Moreover, in Portico XLV, facing the Western Garden, a part of the maritime nymphaeum of Massa Lubrense will be exhibited. The nymphaeum is completely ornated with floreal and faunal motifs and richly decorated with glass paste and polychromatic marbles.