Arnold Böcklin

1827-1901

Isle of the Dead

Athrpa Mirror ca. 320 B.C.

Iphigenia in Aulis, taken by Ulysses

and Achilles to Artemis

Agamemnon

sacrifices over

Achilles’ objection

Last play of

Euripides

Artemis consoles

Clytemnestra

House of Julia

Felix, Pompeii

• Ariadne is seen, in plate XLIII, just awaking after the fatal sleep during which Theseus had deserted her. The ship of her ungrateful paramour is seen in the distance. The subject was much admired by the ancients, and the figure of Ariadne is full of grace. The sea is represented of a deep-blue colour which contrasts well with the figures, and the sky almost mixes with the horizon. The right hand of Ariadne is here in the favourite position of the painter. Her hair is, as usual, auburn, and her robe is rose-colour very prettily shaded. Xenophon, in the Banquet of Socrates, insinuates that Bacchus and Ariadne were favourite subjects for eating-rooms. In this house we accordingly find a repetition in the chamber of Leda.

Boscotrecase

• One of the most elaborate must have been the villa built by Agrippa, close friend of the emperor Augustus and husband of his daughter Julia. It stood overlooking the Bay of Naples, near the modern Italian town of Boscotrecase. Completely buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., the villa was partially excavated between 1903 and 1905, when wall decorations in four bedrooms were removed. Agrippa died in 12 B.C., and his son Agrippa Postumus became the villa's proprietor in 11 B.C., as inscriptions found there indicate; the frescos must have been completed during renovations begun at that time.