Associated Products
exhibition Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii (Exhibition)Title: exhibition Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii
Curator: Jessica Powers
Abstract: Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii is the first exhibition in the United States to explore landscape scenes as a striking new genre of ancient Roman art. These works depicted a fascinating yet imaginary vision of a countryside dotted with seaside villas and rural shrines, where gods and mythological heroes mingle with travelers, herdsmen and worshippers. The exhibition featured 66 wall paintings, sculptures, mosaics, and cameo glass and silver vessels created in Roman Italy between 100 B.C. and A.D. 250. Roman Landscapes was presented exclusively at the San Antonio Museum of Art and highlighted works lent by museums in Italy, France, and Germany, many of which had never before been shown in the United States.
The exhibition introduced visitors to the cultural and archaeological contexts of Roman landscapes, beginning with paintings and sculptures from houses in Pompeii and nearby villas on the Bay of Naples that showed how landscape scenes decorated lavish Roman residences and their gardens. Mural paintings and relief sculptures that depicted coastal villas and rustic shrines displayed the imaginary aspects of Roman images of the natural world and connected the genre’s appearance to the political and social upheaval of the late Republic and early Empire. Fantastical views of Egypt and Greece reflected ancient fascination with these celebrated lands incorporated into the Roman Empire. Mythological paintings then revealed landscape scenes as settings for hazardous encounters between humans and the gods. Roman Landscapes closed by comparing wall paintings from communal tombs in Rome with those from houses and exploring the adaptation of landscape imagery for funerary settings. The exhibition also highlighted the artistic conventions that distinguish Roman landscape scenes, including their fluid, almost “impressionistic” brushwork and the use of bird’s-eye perspective.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/artwork/exhibition/romanlandscapes/Primary URL Description: San Antonio Museum of Art website
Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii (Catalog)Title: Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii
Author: Jessica Powers
Author: Lynley McAlpine
Author: Bettina Bergmann
Author: Verity Platt
Author: Timothy M. O'Sullivan
Author: Thomas Fröhlich
Abstract: Artists in Roman Italy created exquisite landscapes that reflect close ties with their environment, ranging from sunny seascapes and tranquil country shrines to vividly imagined views of Greece and Egypt. This richly illustrated volume reveals the intimate connections between these works and ancient Romans’ social, political and religious lives. The essays explore landscapes that decorated urban houses and tombs in Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum and sumptuous coastal villas on the Bay of Naples, as well as the aims and desires of the ancient patrons who commissioned these inventive depictions of the natural world.
Landscapes in a wide variety of media—wall paintings, marble sculptures, mosaics, precious metals and gems—conveyed devotion to the gods and nostalgia for an idealized past, while celebrating Roman imperial power and technical ingenuity. This timely volume demonstrates the longevity of shared human concerns about control and development of the land, about the competing demands of wealth and piety, and about the preservation of natural resources.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://worldcat.org/title/1349448957Primary URL Description: WorldCat record
Secondary URL:
https://www.accartbooks.com/us/book/roman-landscapes/Secondary URL Description: ACC Art Books website
Catalog Type: Exhibition Catalog
Publisher: San Antonio Museum of Art and Ediciones el Viso
The Artful Landscapes of Ancient Rome: From House and Tomb to the Museum (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: The Artful Landscapes of Ancient Rome: From House and Tomb to the Museum
Abstract: Artists in Roman Italy created exquisite landscapes that reflect close ties with their environment, ranging from sunny seascapes and tranquil country shrines to vividly imagined views of Greece and Egypt. The San Antonio Museum of Art's spring exhibition, Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii, explored this inventive genre of Roman art through a selection of wall paintings, sculptures and luxury objects, many never before shown in the United States. In this lecture, curator Jessica Powers offered a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition, on view from February 24-May 21, 2023
Author: Jessica Powers
Date: 02/24/2023
Location: San Antonio Museum of Art
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/the-artful-landscapes-of-ancient-rome-from-house-and-tomb-to-the-museum/?year=2023&month=2&day=25&hour=0&minute=0&second=0Primary URL Description: San Antonio Museum of Art website
Lennox Seminar: Trees and Their Messages in the Roman Landscape sages in the Roman Landscape (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Lennox Seminar: Trees and Their Messages in the Roman Landscape sages in the Roman Landscape
Abstract: This lecture discussed the many roles that trees played in shaping Roman culture and perceptions of the environment, from domestic decoration to religious divination. Since the early practice of augury, trees played a key role in defining sacred terrain. Late verbal and visual images attest how trees marked sites of worship, preserved historical memory, and resolved legal disputes. A gnarled oak forms a nodal point for travelers and pilgrims; regimented rows of trees demarcate private boundaries and promise fertility of crops; orchards protect and enliven tombs. Roman modes of viewing trees capture a dynamic reciprocity between arboreal and human life.
Author: Bettina Bergmann
Date: 03/01/2023
Location: Trinity University
Primary URL:
https://www.trinity.edu/news/presenting-2023-lennox-seminar-lecture-seriesPrimary URL Description: Trinity University website
Secondary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/lennox-seminar-trees-and-their-messages-in-the-roman-landscape/?year=2023&month=3&day=2&hour=1&minute=0&second=0Secondary URL Description: San Antonio Museum of Art website
The Lennox Seminar: Roman Landscapes (Course or Curricular Material)Title: The Lennox Seminar: Roman Landscapes
Author: Timothy M. O'Sullivan
Abstract: Trinity University’s special topics seminar this semester focused on Roman Landscapes. Roman art provides some of our earliest examples of the depiction of landscape. Although there are important precursors in Greek, Near Eastern, and Egyptian art, the earliest examples in the European tradition of what we would recognize as landscape painting emerge in Ancient Rome in the first century B.C.E. In these paintings, the landscape itself attracts the viewer’s attention as much as the figures or buildings set in it.
Landscape art emerged in Rome during a fraught historical period, one in which dramatic and rapid urbanization caused the population of the city to swell to over a million inhabitants. The increasing tendency to depict peaceful natural settings in Roman art comes exactly at the same moment when the Roman countryside was being roiled by almost a century of civil war.
In this course, we tried to understand when and why this focus on landscape art emerged at Rome. We focused on the historical background of landscape art, including the history of land use on the Italian peninsula and the particular Roman emphasis on the countryside. We then read some of the major works of poetry from the late republic and early Augustan period that engaged with issues around land and environment, including Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics. Finally, we turned to visual landscapes, particularly the proliferation of landscape frescoes that decorated Roman houses and the similar phenomenon of carefully arranged gardens and other natural spaces that were an integral feature of Roman home design.
This course was offered at the same time as a major exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art entitled Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii. Students paid several visits to this exhibit. Thanks to the generosity of the Lennox Foundation, four distinguished scholars also visited to give a public lecture and teach the class.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://www.trinity.edu/news/presenting-2023-lennox-seminar-lecture-seriesPrimary URL Description: Trinity University website
Audience: Undergraduate
Lennox Seminar: Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in the Casa dell’Efebo, Pompeii (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Lennox Seminar: Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in the Casa dell’Efebo, Pompeii
Abstract: Nilotic scenes—Roman depictions of imagined Egyptian landscapes—are important sources for the iconography and material constitution of Roman imperialism. Because these images are most commonly found in household contexts, they provide an opportunity to explore the embeddedness of imperial ideology within everyday life. This lecture used a case study from Pompeii to investigate the construction and representation of “Egypt” in Roman household space, and, by extension, the ways that ancient viewers encountered and interacted with domestic images of empire.
In the garden of the house known as the “Casa dell’Efebo,” paintings of Egyptian riverscapes shared space—and interacted with—a complex assemblage of architecture, wall paintings, statuary, and vegetation. Dr. Barrett recontextualized the Nilotic frescoes within this eclectic ensemble, examining how the contents of the garden work together to create a sense of place, construct real and imagined landscapes, and shape the experiences available to the people who used this space. In contrast to older interpretations connecting Roman Aegyptiaca to Isis cult or the problematic concept of “Egyptomania,” a contextual analysis of this garden assemblage destabilized both of these readings and suggested new possibilities for meaning. Simultaneously faraway and familiar, the garden’s imagined landscapes transform domestic space into a microcosm of empire and encourage their occupants to engage in open-ended ways with changing constructions of imperial, local, and cultural identities.
Author: Dr. Caitlín Barrett, Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University, and Co-Director of the C
Date: 3/22/2023
Location: Trinity University
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/lennox-seminar-domesticating-empire-egyptian-landscapes-in-the-casa-dellefebo-pompeii/?year=2023&month=3&day=23&hour=0&minute=0&second=0Lennox Seminar: Beyond the Picturesque: Personification as Landscape in Roman Visual Culture (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Lennox Seminar: Beyond the Picturesque: Personification as Landscape in Roman Visual Culture
Abstract: In this lecture, Dr. Jaś Elsner, professor of late antique art at Oxford University, examined the place of personification in Roman landscape imagery and the ways this played alongside and against more literalist landscape painting.
Author: Dr. Jaś Elsner, Professor of Late Antique Art at Oxford University and Visiting Professor of Art and
Date: 3/21/2023
Location: San Antonio Museum of Art
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/beyond-the-picturesque-personification-as-landscape-in-roman-visual-culture/?year=2023&month=3&day=31&hour=23&minute=0&second=0Lennox Seminar: Patron’s Tomb: Landscape, Family, and Legacy in Roman Art (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Lennox Seminar: Patron’s Tomb: Landscape, Family, and Legacy in Roman Art
Abstract: The Tomb of Patron, a first-century B.C. tomb in Rome featured in the San Antonio Museum of Art’s exhibition Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii, utilizes landscape to deny the darkness of death. This presentation examined the lush garden imagery of Patron’s tomb alongside the Ara Pacis Augustae to explore how landscapes evoke the regenerative powers of nature and express hope for the longevity of Roman families.
Author: Dr. Rachel Foulk, Professor of Art History at Ferris State University
Date: 4/12/2023
Location: Trinity University
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/lennox-seminar-patrons-tomb-landscape-family-and-legacy-in-roman-art/?year=2023&month=4&day=13&hour=0&minute=0&second=0Limatus Bespoke X SAMA Roman Landscapes-inspired Fashion Show (Exhibition)Title: Limatus Bespoke X SAMA Roman Landscapes-inspired Fashion Show
Curator: Limatus Bespoke and SAMA
Abstract: Local fashion company Limatus Bespoke produced a Roman Landscapes-inspired mini-collection for Spring-Summer 2023 and worked with SAMA to carry out a special fashion show. The evening included sips, music, and, of course, art, with gallery tours of the exhibition following the runway show.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/fashion-show-limatus-bespoke/?year=2023&month=3&day=3&hour=0&minute=0&second=0Free Spring Break Family Day: Roman Landscapes (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Free Spring Break Family Day: Roman Landscapes
Abstract: SAMA’s free Spring Break Family Day was programmed entirely around the Museum’s Roman Landscapes exhibition and offered a fun-filled day of activities for the young and young at heart. Including artmaking, landscape-oriented story time, arts performances, garden and environmentally focused activities, food trucks, sweet treats, and even a petting zoo, the celebration took place in the galleries and throughout the SAMA campus.
Author: SAMA
Date: 3/14/2023
Location: SAMA
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/spring-break-family-day-roman-landscapes/?year=2023&month=3&day=14&hour=15&minute=0&second=0Landscapes by Boat with San Antonio River Foundation (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Landscapes by Boat with San Antonio River Foundation
Abstract: Frates Seeligson, Executive Director of the San Antonio River Foundation, led an hour-long river boat excursion that focused on the San Antonio River and the ways the natural landscape has shaped our community today, impacting issues of urbanization, land control, access, preservation, and overall climate action.
Author: Frates Seeligson
Date: 3/26/2023
Location: Gloria Galt River Landing, San Antonio Museum of Art
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/landscapes-by-boat-with-sa-river-foundations-frates-seelingson/?year=2023&month=3&day=26&hour=18&minute=0&second=0Ancient Roman Recipes with the San Antonio Botanical Garden (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Ancient Roman Recipes with the San Antonio Botanical Garden
Abstract: Educators from the Museum and the San Antonio Botanical Garden discussed the flora and fauna featured in the works in Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii and our connection to the land. As a sumptuous follow-up, guests were able to partake in a special demo and tasting of dishes that brought together both true Roman ingredients of varying social classes, and modern culinary techniques. Ancient Roman flavors included a local spread of foraged greens, jams, winter pickles, meats, breads, and luxury desserts.
Author: SAMA
Author: San Antonio Botanical Garden
Date: 4/16/2023
Location: San Antonio Botanical Garden
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/ancient-roman-recipes-with-the-san-antonio-botanical-garden/?year=2023&month=4&day=16&hour=19&minute=0&second=0Texas Scholars Dig Roman Villas (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Texas Scholars Dig Roman Villas
Abstract: Distinguished scholars Dr. John R. Clarke, Annie Laurie Howard Regents Professor in Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin; and Dr. Thomas N. Howe, Professor of Art History at Southwestern University and Director of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation, discussed archaeological innovation and projects that explored, documented, and preserved the luxurious Roman villas constructed along the Bay of Naples and destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Author: Dr. John R. Clarke
Author: Dr. Thomas N. Howe
Date: 4/18/2023
Location: SAMA
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/texas-scholars-dig-roman-villas/?year=2023&month=4&day=18&hour=23&minute=0&second=0SongScapes Musical Recital (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: SongScapes Musical Recital
Abstract: Acclaimed operatic singer Bronwyn White conducted a recital that celebrated Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii. Exploring the character of landscapes as reflected in music, she performed songs in German, English, French, and Mandarin, with selections from the standard classical repertoire and those by composers from traditionally underrepresented populations.
Author: Brownyn White
Date: 5/12/2023
Location: SAMA
Primary URL:
https://www.samuseum.org/events/event/songscapes-musical-performance/?year=2023&month=5&day=13&hour=0&minute=0&second=0