The week following the family visit was much cooler, and Paul and I decided to go up to London to the British Museum for the exhibition 'Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum'. Paul has always wanted to go to Pompeii - one reason we are setting off for Italy quite soon - so this seemed like a good introduction for him. I visited Pompeii in 1962, so I imagine there may be some changes!
The objects in the exhibition were beautiful and some quite heart-wrenching, but it was so terribly crowded that it was hard to see things and I found myself getting irritated at the slow-moving crowds. I find it difficult to move at such a slow pace, my back starts hurting after a while, and I get tired of all the pushing and shoving and angry at people who stand and chat for ages in front of the objects so you can't see them properly. And the labels are often placed very low and are very hard to read with so many people in the way, and there are never enough large print guides available.
I didn't like to take photos - I'm not sure whether they were prohibited or not, but nobody seemed to be taking any, and it would have been almost impossible with all the people anyway. So I've found some photos of my favourite items from various places on the web.
The exhibition began with a Pompeiian street, with taverns and shops and a poor dog which has been eternally captured twisted in agony. Then it moved into an imagined home belonging to a wealthy Pompeiian. You might imagine the wealthy folk looking a bit like this.
Actually, this is the baker Terentius Neo and his wife.
The exhibition then moved into the atrium, where you might expect to find a guard dog - though this one is just a mosaic.
It was placed in front of the impluvium - the pool that collected rainwater.
To one side of the atrium was a bedroom, where there were the kinds of objects you might reasonably find there - lamps, cosmetics, a carbonised bed - and this very sad little relic, a carbonised cradle.
This was one of the more heart-wrenching exhibits, especially when you learned that there had originally been signs of a little dead occupant inside.
A lighter area of the exhibition represented the garden. Most wealthy people's houses had a garden, sometimes for growing useful trees and plants and herbs, but sometimes just a place to relax.
This is my favourite wall painting of all those in the exhibition. It has such a variety of birds and plants, and such exuberance; I'd quite like it on my wall here. It's also reproduced on a scarf and a shawl in the museum shop, so I'm seriously considering the shawl as my Christmas present this year.
There are other wall paintings too - I particularly liked this one of Flora.
It reminded me of various Botticelli paintings, in a way.
In the dining room, there were cups and mugs and vessels, as well as wall paintings and frescos and mosaics. I particularly liked this humorous one about the evils of drink.
There was a wall painting showing a huge variety of seafood on which you might reasonably expect to dine, and several showing convivial parties with lots of drinking, so perhaps the owner of the mosaic above was rather un-typical in his view of the evils of alcohol!
In the kitchen area there were things like cooking pots, an example of an oven, a huge scary jar for keeping (and fattening) dormice, frescos of food, and this carbonised loaf of bread.
You wouldn't be at all surprised to see a loaf like this in the bakery area of any large supermarket today.
The exhibition finished off with another moving piece, the display of plaster casts of people in the throes of death, one almost in the boxing position as their terrifying death is captured forever - quite horrific. I'm afraid I had to walk past without looking for too long. Another niche shows a woman who fell as her villa was overwhelmed; she has been cast in epoxy resin, and apparently you can see glimpses of her bones beneath the translucent cast. I couldn't look that closely. The beautiful gold jewellery she was wearing was displayed nearby.
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