The sixth day of the "Museum Week 2018" is dedicated to the portrayal of nature in culture, art and science, so let’s discover the Ancient Roman painted garden from the Villa of Livia, on display at the Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo in Rome.
A painted nature
You can escape the hustle of the Termini train station entering this luxuriant paradise survived from Ancient Rome: a unique painted garden from the Villa of Livia will surround you and let completely immerse yourself in a new, serene dimension. Various exotic birds play in the varied and wild vegetation prospering beyond an illusionistic fence or fly over the blue sky, whose color variation renders an atmospheric effect. The different species of flora and fauna are depicted in accurate detail: among the variety of flowers, plants and trees, for example, scholars have been able to recognize strawberry trees, oleander, cypresses, date palms and oaks.
Livia Drusilla's house
These magnificent frescoes were discovered on the occasion of the excavations carried out around 1863 in the Roman suburb of Prima Porta, along the via Flaminia. The frescoes, dated around the second half of the 1st century BC, decorated the walls of the underground triclinium, or dining room, belonging to the house of Livia Drusilla, wife of the Roman emperor Augustus, known as “Villa di Livia” or “Villa di Primaporta”.
The story of the sacred branch
As narrated by Plinius the Elder in his “Naturalis Historia”, when Livia was still betrothed to Augustus, an eagle dropped a white hen into Livia’s lap as she was seated. The hen held a laurel branch rich of berries in its beak and the haruspices interpreted this as a religious sign and recommended to look after the hen and to plant the branch. The order was granted at the Caesars’ villa along the Tiber river, near the ninth marker of the via Flaminia, which was then called “ad gallinas” or “ad gallinas albas” (to the white hens). A sacred grove grew there from that planted branch.
From the Roman villa to a museum
In the 1950s, the four panels of the painted walls were detached from the Roman villa and are now safely on view in a museum, the Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo. Recently, a faithful reproduction of the painted panels has been set up at the Villa of Livia. The Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo houses one of the most important collections of classical antiquity. If you’d enjoy a visual comparison with the painted garden, you can dive into the vivid colors of the ancient wall decorations displayed in other rooms on the same museum floor, coming from a vanished house at Trastevere, the so-called Villa della Farnesina.