Cockerel - Vannuolo Tomb 4
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: c. 350 BC
Details:
Gabriel Baker
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Deceased Woman on Funeral Couch - Andriuolo Tomba 53
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: 350-330 BC
Details:
Gabriel Baker
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Attic Red-Figure Pelike Depicting Dressing in the Palaestra - Santa Venera Tomb 174
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: 475-450 BC
Details:
Gabriel Baker
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Attic Red-Figure Pelike Depicting Athena - Santa Venera Tomb 245
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: 475-450 BC
Details:
Gabriel Baker
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Hunting Scene - Arcioni (?) Tomb 1
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: 375-350 BC (?)*
Detail:
Gabriel Baker
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Duel - Tomb Painting, Andriuolo Tomb 24
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: 370-360 BC
Detail:
Gabriel Baker
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Duel - Tomb Painting, Andriuolo Tomb 4
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum <br />Date: late 4th century BC <br /><br />Details: The tomb frescoes of fourth century Paestum vividly express a mixture of cultures, drawing from Greek, Lucanian/south Italic, and Etruscan traditions. <br />Funerary games, such as dueling, boxing, and chariot racing, are commonly depicted in these paintings, celebrating the lives of the deceased and the martial virtues valued by Lucanian society. Images of dueling and gladiatorial combat, as pictured in this tomb, seem to have their origins particularly in Italic funerary traditions. However, note that the combatants pictured here wield both Greek and Italic military equipment. The combatant on the left appears to wear an Attic helmet, popular in the Greek east, while his opponent on the right wears an Italo-Corinthian helmet was used in Italy. Both wield a large hoplite shield (hoplon) and seem to wear the type of linen armor (linothorax) used in Greece and Macedonia.<br />Greek and Etruscan traditions peak out elsewhere: the thick red border at the bottom of the image (called a "dado") is well known from Etruscan art, where it was employed to mark off the base of walls; on the other hand, the red spheres hanging around the fighters are almost certainly pomegranates, which were "associated with death and rebirth in Greek iconongraphy as in the story of Persephone eating pomegranate in the underworld" (Tuck, 57).<br /><br />Further reading:<br />Tuck, Steven L. <em>A History of Roman Art. </em>Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
Gabriel Baker
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Attic Black-Figure Lekythos Depicting Theseus vs. Minotaur - Santa Venera Tomb 33
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: late 6th century BC
Gabriel Baker
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Battle Scene - Tomb Painting, Andriuolo Tomb 114
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Date: 330-320 BC
Details:
Gabriel Baker
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Tomb of the Diver
Location: National Archaeological Museum of Paestum <br />Date: 480-470 BC <br />Details: The so-called Tomb of the Diver was discovered about a mile (1.5 km) south of the ruins of Paestum. The tomb consisted of a chamber built from five stone slabs--one for each of the walls and one for the roof--and covered with plaster. They feature one of the earliest and best preserved examples of Greek monumental painting. <br /><br />The walls of the tomb depict a symposium, an important social gathering for aristocrats in ancient Greek communities. Participants at symposia would recline together on couches after a meal to enjoy drinking, poetry, music, and conversation. One of the men portrayed in this tomb holds a lyre--an instrument which was used to accompany lyric poetry--and a lyre was one of the grave goods in this tomb. The symposium scene clearly connects the tomb's occupant to the elite, male culture that was prevalent across the Greek world in this period. <br /><br />On the other hand, the tomb equally indicates connections to Italian cultural traditions. The covering slab features the painting of the eponymous diver, after whom the tomb is named. It may symbolize the diver metaphorically "diving" into the afterlife, transitioning from life to death, paralleling scenes in Etruscan art (e.g. the diver scene in the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing). It has also been argued that the local inhabitant was of Italian origin, thus attesting to the cross-cultural contact that characterized Paestum (Greek Poseidonia) from an early date. <br /><br />Further reading: <br />Beaulieu, M.-C. 2016. <em>The Sea in the Greek Imagination</em>. University of Pennsylvania Press. <br /><br />Tuck, S. K. 2015. <em>A History of Roman Art</em>. Wiley-Blackwell. <br /><br />Robinson, E.G.D. 2011. "Identity in the Tomb of the Diver at Poseidonia." In M. Gleba and H. W. Hornaes (eds.), <em>Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities</em>. Oxbow Books.
Gabriel Baker.
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