30/03/2024
Frescos from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale.
Boscoreale, an area about a mile north of Pompeii, was notable in antiquity for having numerous aristocratic country villas. The villa, originally owned by P. Fannius Synistor, built around 50-40 BC, was sold at auction in 12 AD and at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., it belonged to Lucio Erennio Floro. Excavated in the early 1900s, the villa’s frescoes are among the most important to be found anywhere in the Roman world.
The villa at Boscoreale is a variant of the so-called villa rustica, a country house of which only a small part functioned as a farmhouse (pars rustica). The majority of the villa served as a residence for the owner, a member of that class of wealthy Roman citizens who owned more properties of this kind and used them as country houses. The painted decoration of the villa at Boscoreale, which was executed sometime around 40–30 B.C., attests to the original owner as a rich man with exquisite taste. The fact that the mid-first-century B.C. decoration was not replaced by another, more contemporary, decoration in the first century A.D. is a clear indication that there was already an awareness of the quality of the frescoes in antiquity.
