If the features of many characters of the ancient Rome are not very familiar to you and are misted with your school memories, in the Roman Art Section in the Louvre, at the ground floor of the Denon wing, the busts and statues of emperors, philosophers , historians, statesmen, will help revive your knowledge of the ancient Roman civilization.
The findings testify to the splendor and history of Roma “caput mundi” as that of everyday people, with their tools, furniture, paintings and mosaics.
A fragment of the Ara Pacis, presents a group of characters that are directed to the right, a particularly exquisite sculptural quality of the official procession of consecration that decorates the great altar erected on the Campus Martius in Rome and dedicated by the Senate to Peace, at Augustus's victory over Spain and Gallia. The fragment belongs to the top of the north facade of the monument. France also owned the piece (various segments) classified as "Fragment de relief de l’Ara Pacis, façade sur jardin de la Villa Médicis”, made of paterae and wreaths with ribbons attached to bucrania (from the greek 'ox skull', ornament on the theme of the animal sacrifice and then captured in' renaissance art).
Pompeian Testimonials represent a civilization whose artistic expression was certainly the apotheosis and glorification of power and beauty.
The famous Treasury of Boscoreale can not be missed. A collection of silver and gold from the fine workmanship that includes a table service, three mirrors and some gold ornaments, was discovered in 1894 during the excavations of a Roman villa in Boscoreale, located at 24 km from Naples in the Diocese of Nola. In May, following the discovery, the Treasury was illegally brought to France by the Neapolitan antiquarians, the Canessa brothers, and was dismembered. Later, the Baron Edmond James de Rothschild and other collectors bought it, donated it to the Louvre and reassembled the treasure. The jewelry was instead purchased by the administration of the National Museums. The treasure was found in the torcularium, of the villa, a space reserved for the pressing of grapes and which at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 was the safest room of the house where the landlord gave orders to hide the treasure.
The table service comprises many items for pouring wine, saltcellars objects and sauce boasts. The finest items are certainly the cups, both for drinking and the purely decorative ones.
The three silver mirrors, together with the gold jewelry, which could have belonged to the wife of the owner, are decorated with feminine themes, of elegant sexuality. The mirror called "di Leda" has a medallion in its center. It represents Leda watering the swan (Giove). The second has Dionysus in the center, with sorrowful eyes, and the last, although the disk is empty, has a handle shaped like a club that ends in a lion's skin, a clear reference to Omphale, character from the Greek mythology. For three years, Heracles was the slave of the queen of Lydia, daughter of the river Iardano, who gave him four children: Illo, Agelaus, Lamo and Tirseno.
He was forced to dress as a woman and humbled to spin wool, to submit fully to the Queen, while Omphale dressed in the lion skin of Heracles.