NEW POMPEII FRESCOES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15002, 25 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEW POMPEII FRESCOES.

A ROMAN BUSINESS STREET. Further excavations of the Street of Abundance at Pompeii, which was covered by lava in A.D. 79, have led to new discoveries, and the ashes have now been removed from one of the frescoes. It represents the carrying off of the image of the goddess Cybele on a little stage to the shrine of Dionysius. This is a gabled niche in the wall of a house, in -which stands a Bust of the god. The painted figures of worshippers surround the goddess, and four men are represented passing poles into holes in the sides of the little stage in order to lift it. Just in this way nowadays the image of a saint is carried through the streets of Naples, shoulder-high, to visit a saint in another church. The newly-found street, so far as yet uncovered, 6eems to be a business street, for the wide windows just above the level of the pavement must have been shops, and there are several of these windows, whereas the streets containing nobles' houses show blank walls, broken by the house doors and here and there small windows.

The magnificence of the finest room in the excavation made by Signor Item is almost beyond description, and would have delighted the soul of Raphael. The lifesize figures in the frescoes that run all round the room are disposed in exquisite groups, the colouring is vivid, the female forms are beautiful and full of life. The chief incident in the paintings is the carrying-out of a sentence on a lovely girl, whose nude back and shoulders, as she kneels with her head on the lap of another female figure, awajte the stroke of & rod held threateningly above the head of the next figure. The woman who supports the girl's shrinking form lays her hand caressingly or comfortingly upon the bent head. On the opposite wall a female figure seems just to have caught sight of the proceeding, and lifts a hand in horror. The features of the female faces have a stern character which are not observed in other Pompeian frescoes.