Dido, Queen of Carthage

Herculaneum was a wealthy Roman city near Pompeii. Like Pompeii, it was destroyed in 79 CE when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Herculaneum was rediscovered in 1709 and systematic excavations resumed in 1738. This work is broken up into three parts: a description of the city, a description of its paintings and sculptures, and a description of the city’s remaining material culture.

Images from: Jerome Bellicard’s Observations upon the antiquities of the town of Heculaneum. London: printed for D. Wilson, and T. Durham…, 1753.

Call Number: N5775 .B4

Catalog Record: https://bit.ly/344oEV7

Corinthian potters invented the black-figure technique most associated with Ancient vase aesthetics, but in the period from 650 to 640 B.C., a time that scholars call Late Proto-Corinthian, potters decorated vases with simple patterns such as those seen here.

The uniform scaled pattern was drawn with a compass, you can still see the centering points.