#italian roman

[city-of-ladies]

"Here’s what we know about Julia Felix: she lived in Pompeii from at least 62 CE. She was possibly illegitimate but was definitely not a member of the social and cultural elite. She worked for a living setting up and running a very interesting business and, by 79 CE, she had planned to shift her focus from managing a business to owning property. We know all these things because twentieth-century excavations at her business uncovered an advert, carved in stone and attached to the external wall of her huge building. It reads:

"To rent for the period of five years from the thirteenth day of next August to the thirteenth day of the sixth August, the Venus Bath fitted for the nogentium, shops with living quarters over the shops, apartments on the second floor located in the building of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius. At the end of five years, the agreement is terminated."

This find illuminated the building it was attached to, bringing what otherwise looked like a very large anonymous domestic house into dazzling focus. With this description of the purpose of each room written by the owner herself, archaeologists and historians could see the site through a whole new lens and they realised that they had discovered a Roman entertainment space for the working middle classes. It is, so far, a completely unique find and it is magnificent. It offers us, as modern viewers, two amazing things: a little glimpse into the lives of the commercial classes of the Roman Empire who are so often completely and utterly invisible, and a brutal reminder that so much of what we ‘know’ about Roman women in the Roman world comes from rules concerning only the most elite.

We’ll do that second part first, because it’s the least fun. Roman written and legal sources are pretty universal in their agreement that although women could own property, they could not control it; they had no legal rights, could not make contracts and were to be treated as minors by the legal system for their entire lives. In order to buy or sell property women required a male guardian to oversee and sign off on any transactions. This is a basic truism of women in the Roman Empire, repeated ad nauseum by sources both ancient and modern including me, and it is undermined by Julia Felix’s rental notice. 

The rental ad makes it pretty clear that Julia Felix is the owner-operator of a business complex including public baths, shops and apartments (there’s more too, as we’ll see), and she doesn’t seem to require anyone else to help her rent it out. She names her father – sort of; ‘Spurius’ might just mean that she is illegitimate – but this is effectively a surname, a personal identifier to differentiate her from other Julia Felixes in the area. It doesn’t mean her father was involved. Furthermore, the use of her father’s name as an identifier suggests that Julia didn’t have a husband and was either unmarried or widowed in 79 CE. The strong implication of her advert is that Julia Felix was an independent lady, a honey making money and a momma profiting dollars who could truthfully throw her hands up to Destiny’s Child.

We will never know if Julia escaped the flames and choking ash of 79 CE, fleeing as it swallowed her business and her home, but one discovery, made on 28 January 1952, suggests that she didn’t. The archaeologists, led by Amedeo Maiuri, uncovered on that day the skeleton of a woman who had fallen while running across the garden during the disaster. It’s clear this fallen woman was well off, because she was wearing a lot of gold jewellery. She carried four gold half-hoop earrings and wore four gold rings. Two of these rings were particularly expensive; both contained a red carnelian gem, one carved with a figure of Mercury, the other with an eagle. Around her neck she wore a necklace of gold filigree, dotted with ten pearls and hung with a green pendant. Someone stole both the necklace and earrings from the Pompeii Antiquarium in 1975 and no one, somehow, had ever bothered to photograph them so all we have are descriptions but the rings that survive are fine and expensive. The woman who wore them – was wearing them when she died – had real money to buy these objects and the woman who wore them did'nt leave Pompei in time.

 Moreover, when she was found it was clear that at the moment of her death she was heading not towards the street or towards safety, but towards the shrine to Isis in the garden where all the most valuable possessions were kept. The valuable possessions that Julia Felix grafted for and maybe couldn’t bear to leave behind. There’s no way to tell whether this skeleton is Julia Felix, whether these bones once stood and looked at the plots of land Julia bought and made plans, or whether they belong to a looter or a chancer or someone just caught out. But it’s nice to pretend that Julia Felix, who shaped the city’s roads around her dream and offered respite and luxury to workers and made a tonne of money doing it, died and was buried with the place that still bears her name."

A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire, Emma Southon

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Pair of Architectural Reliefs with Elephants.

Date: A.D. 80–100

Culture: Roman

Place of origin: Western Roman Empire

Medium: Italian marble

[tragediambulante]

The abduction of Proserpina, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1621-22

[thesixthduke]

[from-a-spiders-web]

Cupid Making His Bow (detail), c. 1534 Parmigianino

[the-evil-clergyman]

The Toilette of Venus by Benedetto Gennari II (1674-84)

[siriplaymastery]

Nude in the hammock (1892). Life Size Carrara Marble, Antonio Frilli.

Antonio Frilli (?) - 1902 ). He was a Florentine sculptor specializing in marble and alabaster statues. Two years after the sculptor's death, his son Umberto, brought this work to the United States to the Louisiana Trade Fair, where the piece won the Exhibition's Grand Prix and six gold medals.

[sforzesco]

giulia farnese, lucrezia borgia, caterina gonzaga

we are. figuring out looks. slowly but surely, we're figuring out looks.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta / tip jar!

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (Italian, 1675-1741) Apollo, 1718 Mauritshuis, Den Haag

[n3bismel]

Italy pt.2

(cr. me)

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Apollo of the Cassel type.

Date: A.D. 125-150

Period: Imperial Roman

Medium: Marble (Paros marble)

[tragediambulante]

Details from the room of Cupid and Psyche in Palazzo Te, Giulio Romano, 1526-28

[classic-art-favourites]

Isabella of Portugal by Titian, 1548.

[vintagehomecollection]

The bath in the New Orleans Junior League Decorator Showcase, designed by Ann Holden and Ann Dupuy in 1987.

Interior Visions: Great American Designers and the Showcase House, 1988

[the-evil-clergyman]

Venus and Mars by Sandro Botticelli (1485)

[vintage-tigre]