This is a major study of illusionistic wall painting in the Roman houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as those in Boscoreale, Oplontis, and Rome itself.
Donatella Mazzoleni writes on the connections between Roman architecture and the programs of illusionistic wall paintings employed in these magnificent structures. Umberto Pappalardo examines the Roman domestic ideal and its realization in wall painting and through other elements of interior decoration. These two essays precede a magnificently illustrated guide to twenty-eight important villas-among them, the Villa of the Mysteries and the House of the Faun in Pompeii; the Casa di Livia, the Villa della Farnesina, and the Domus Aurea in Rome; the Casa del Gran Portale in Herculaneum; and the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor in Boscoreale.