Painting in ancient Rome is a rather poorly understood aspect of Roman art, as there are few survivals, which are mostly wall-paintings from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, where many decorative wall paintings were preserved under the ashes and hardened lava. A smaller number of paintings survive from other areas, including Rome itself.

From the study of surviving paintings it has been possible to form a panorama of the artistic life of Ancient Rome between the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. Nevertheless, this body of works is only a tiny fraction of the great quantity of painting produced in the Roman Empire during its long history, and there is a lack of significant remains from earlier and later periods, particularly in techniques other than fresco and from Romanized regions besides Campania.Gardner, Helen; Kleiner, Fred S. & Mamiya, Christin J. Gardner's art through the ages: the Western perspective. Cengage Learning, 2005. Volume 1. pp. 178–185

Rome was always an avid consumer and producer of art. Originally under Etruscan rule, the Romans developed an art that was largely indebted to them, which was itself heavily influenced by archaic Greek art. As Roman power grew it came into contact with Hellenistic Greek culture, and began to assimilate its principles into all artistic fields, including painting. Greek paintings were highly coveted luxuries and enormous quantities were imported during the conquest of Greek cultural areas, and it became customary to copy famous works and to vary on Greek techniques and subjects.

Much of what is known about Greek painting is owed to Rome, since hardly any original Greek paintings survive from any era, except for vase painting. Were it not for the preservation of Pompeii and Herculaneum in fairly good condition, whose murals are numerous and of great quality, the contemporary idea of the painting of both Ancient Greece and Rome would be based almost solely on literary descriptions.Ling, Roger. Roman painting. Cambridge University Press, 1991. pp. 5–8

Roman painting had a significant influence on the evolution of Western painting. Its traditions continued into Paleochristian Byzantine, and Romanesque art. Much later on, renewed interest in emulating Classical painting provided an impetus for the art of the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, and Romanticism.Rosenblum, Robert. Transformations in late eighteenth century art. Princeton University Press, 1970. pp. 3–49Kitzinger, Ernst. The Arts as Aspects of a Renaissance: Rome and Italy. In Benson, Robert L.; Constable, Giles & Lanham, Carol Dana. Renaissance and renewal in the twelfth century. Volume 26 de Medieval Academy reprints for teaching da Mass Medieval Academy of America Cambridge. University of Toronto Press, 1991. pp. 637–669 Roman painting has been an active area of scholarly research for centuries, as archeological excavations have continued to uncover new artworks.Boardman, John; Griffin, Jasper & Murray, Oswyn. The Oxford history of the Roman world. Oxford University Press, 2001. pp. 416–447

Origins: Etruria and Greece

As with the other arts, the art of painting in Ancient Rome was indebted to its Greek antecedents. In archaic times, when Rome was still under Etruscan influence, they shared a linear style learned from the Ionian Greeks of the Archaic period, showing scenes from Greek mythology, daily life, funeral games, banquet scenes with musicians and dancers, animals, and floral and abstract decoration. Remaining examples of Etruscan painting come from funerary contexts, found in tombs in Capaccio Paestum, Orvieto, Tarquinia, Cerveteri and other cities.Western painting. Encyclopaedia Britannica online Etruscan styles of tomb painting was probably similar to the decoration of temples and public buildings.

From the 5th century BC on, the Athenian classical style began to predominate in Greece. During this period painting accrued the technical resources and thematic spectrum that would later influence the Romans. Through a span of about a hundred years, generations of artists such as Polygnotos, Apollodorus, Zeuxis, and Parrhasius gradually developed techniques for representing perspective, volume, shading, and scenery, as evidenced by thousands of surviving vase paintings.

By the last quarter of the 4th century BC, the era of Apelles, the most famous of Greek painters, artists were able to create an impression of three-dimensionality and naturalism in their scenes. Often painting on portable wooden panels, these works spread throughout the area of Greek influence and became known in Rome. The most frequent themes were taken from mythology, followed by portraits and allegories. Less common, though not rare, were landscape paintings, erotic scenes, and still lifes.Ling, Roger. p. 5

Between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC classical Greek and Hellenistic art exerted a massive influence on Roman art, through their contact with the Greek colonies in Magna Graecia. This contact was especially through military campaigns; Greek works of art became coveted war booty. Greek artists also began to move to Rome there in search of generous patronage, and adapted to the demands of local taste. Among the genres that would become preferred for domestic and tomb decoration was that of landscapes, architecture, and abstract or floral arrangements. Classical Italian tombs are found in Chiusi, an important commercial center of this phase, and their tomb paintings show advances in the technique of shading and three-dimensional effects. However, almost all painting done in the Republic is lost today, except for a few examples, such as fragment of a fresco found in a tomb on Esquiline Hill.

By the 1st century BC, large private collections were formed by patricians who spent fortunes acquiring new pieces. Pliny the Elder says that Agrippa paid 1.2 million sestertius for two paintings showing Ajax the Great and Venus.Pollitt, Jerome J. The art of Rome, c. 753 B.C.-A.D. 337: sources and documents. Cambridge University Press, 1983. pp. 114–116

Evolution and styles

In the transition from the Republic to the Empire, Roman painting consolidated and developed its own style distinct from the Hellenistic canon. The ensemble of paintings of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Boscoreale, ranging from the 2nd century BC to AD 79, has provided scholars a basis for establishing a division of Roman painting into four periods or styles. This division was defined by the German archaeologist August Mau in the 19th century, and is still used today, although it has been subject to dispute among art historians, because their characteristics are shared to some extent, making the identification of examples confusing and subject to individual interpretations, especially the Third and Fourth styles. The problem is further complicated by the use of archaisms and the overlapping of trends in late phases.Ling, Roger. pp. 8–10Clarke, John R. (1991). The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250. University of California Press, 1991. p. 31Ling, Roger. pp. 168–174

Although the vast majority of remaining Roman paintings come from Campania and Lazio, surviving fragments from throughout the Empire show that the fashions of the centre were sooner or later assimilated by the regional centers in most of the empire. Nevertheless, It is known that the metropolitan style encountered a lot of resistance in some points in the East and in North Africa.

Among the painters, few names have reached our days. Ancient bibliography cites the Greeks Gorgasus and Damophilus as the first known artists to make paintings in Italy. Gaius Fabius Pictor, a little later, was celebrated as a historical painter and the first Roman painter recorded in history, being seconded by Marcus Pacuvius, Serapion and Methododorus, at a stage when the elite could still devote themselves professionally to the arts without dishonor. From the 2nd century B.C. onward, Sopolis, Dionysius, Glatius and his son Aristippus, Timmachus of Byzantium, and Antiochus Gabinus stood out. In the Empire were Studius, Echion, Lucius and Famulus. No surviving works can be safely attributed to any of them, except for Famulus, who was given as the author of the decoration of Nero's Domus Aurea. However, modern research has uncovered some anonymous artists from certain groups of works that seem to have come from the same hand, such as the "Painter of Thelephus", the "Painter of Admetus", the "Painter of the wounded Adonis" and so on.Richardson, R. A catalog of identifiable figure painters of ancient Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. JHU Press, 2000. pp. 5–10Poynter, Edward J. Classic and Italian Painting. Read Books, 2008. pp. 39–43Van Dyke, John Charles. A Text-Book of the History of Painting. BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009. pp. 21–35

New discoveries of Roman paintings have emerged from recent archaeological research, with several examples discovered in areas far from the capital, such as in Germany, Hungary, France, Portugal, and Asia.

First Style

The First Style, also referred to as stonework or inlay – named after crustae, stony plaques of covering – was in evidence from the 2nd century BC to the year AD 80 and is in essence abstract. Its origins are obscure, but it seems to have derived from the painting employed in the decoration of Greek temples and altars, and was adapted for the decoration of dwellings all around the Mediterranean by the late 4th century BC Good examples survive in southern Russia, the Near East, Sicily, France, Spain, Carthage, and Egypt.For the western mediterranean, see the catalogue in Läppi, Thomas (2020). Hellenistische Wanddekorationen. Syntax, Semantik und Chronologie des Ersten Stils im westlichen Mittelmeerraum. Wiesbaden, Reichert. It is characterized by the imitation of the effect of stonework, with the application of bright colors over plaster divided into square areas in relief, simulating stone blocks and their colors and textures. As Roman houses had few windows to the outside, the interior walls tended to be continuous, and the First Style seeks to emphasize this unity by creating integrated environments. In John Clarke's opinion, the dependence on surface relief for the visual efficiency of this style makes it more a domain of architectural decoration than of painting itself.Ling, Roger. p. 12Clarke, John R. (1991). pp. 32–39

Over time friezes decorated with floral patterns, arabesques and human figures were added, and other architectural elements such as simulated columns and cornices. By the time of the 1st century BC, this type of decoration had already developed in Roman territory a complexity and refinement that greatly distanced it from its Greek prototypes. The areas of color began to no longer obey the design of the relief, going beyond its borders and generating interesting illusionistic effects. The interest in color combinations contributes to increasingly dissociate the style from its structural origin, employing shades never found in real stone and eminently decorative geometric patterns that subvert the logic of architecture, which leads to the formation of the Second Style.Ling, Roger. pp. 12–15

Second Style