Roman Wall Paintings: Styles, Symbols, and the Art of Everyday Life

Roman wall painters decorated plastered interiors with coloured fields, architectural vistas, landscapes and figures. Their work joined the preparation of the wall to the design of a room: painted columns could suggest depth, a border could divide its surfaces and a central panel could present a mythological scene.

Pompeii, Herculaneum and nearby villas preserve a substantial sequence ending with the eruption of AD 79. The conventional four Pompeian styles describe developments within this Campanian material. Painted rooms elsewhere, including Rome and later imperial Ostia, preserve further commissions and changes beyond that sequence.

On this page8 sections

Plaster, pigments and the painting process

Painters worked with a surface prepared by plasterers. Coarser mortar layers supported a smoother finish; marble powder could be included in the upper coats. Vitruvius recommends carefully adding water to quicklime (slaking it) and polishing the surface. He also describes measures against damp, including an inner wall separated from the wet masonry by a ventilated cavity.

In fresco painting, pigments dispersed in water were applied to damp lime plaster. As the lime carbonated, it formed a surface that incorporated the colour. Work on drying or dry plaster used other methods, including lime-based painting and pigments mixed with organic binders. Roman decoration could therefore combine techniques within one room.

Preparatory lines guided the composition. Incised marks and snapped cords established divisions, while sketches outlined more complex figures. Plaster was applied in manageable areas, and divisions could coincide with the horizontal zones of the decoration. Completing a large room required coordinating these tasks before the prepared surface became too dry.

Vitruvius describes ochres, carbon black and other pigments, including the manufacture of Egyptian blue from heated ingredients. He also discusses the darkening of cinnabar exposed to light and the use of wax to protect it. Pigments had different costs and properties, making their preparation and placement part of the commission.

The four Pompeian styles

The four-style scheme is a modern archaeological classification associated with August Mau. The dates overlap, and older decoration could remain in use beside newly painted rooms. It describes changes in the organisation of a wall as well as changes in its pictures.

First Style: imitation masonry

The First Style, prominent in Campania during the second century BC and into the first, imitated costly stone construction. Raised plaster blocks, painted colour and moulded cornices made a wall resemble masonry or marble facing. Relief was part of the effect, with the wall divided into horizontal zones. A household could commission a stone-like interior through plaster and paint.

Second Style: architectural depth

During the first century BC, the Second Style developed pictorial architecture on flatter plaster. Painted columns, ledges and receding views suggested space beyond the room. Shading made objects appear to project from the surface, while vistas opened towards buildings or landscapes.

The villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, painted around 50–40 BC, preserves a developed version of this approach in walls now dispersed among museum collections. In the reconstructed bedroom at the Metropolitan Museum, columns and architectural views extend the space around the visitor.

Third Style: ornament on a flat field

From the later first century BC, the Third Style gave greater emphasis to flat fields of colour. Thin columns, candelabra and delicate ornament divided the surface, with smaller pictures placed within the composition. The late first-century BC paintings from Boscotrecase include miniature landscapes and figures set against spacious backgrounds. Their architecture frames ornament rather than constructing a continuous view into a believable room.

Fourth Style: pictures and architectural fantasy

In the middle and later first century AD, Fourth-Style rooms combined framed pictures, rich ornament and fantastic architecture. Large mythological scenes could stand among panels, delicate figures and painted openings. Pompeii’s House of the Vettii preserves elaborate examples from its final period of occupation. The earlier Dionysiac frieze at the Villa of the Mysteries belongs to a different phase of Pompeian decoration; its interpretation as an initiation ceremony remains debated.

Images and the activities of a room

Painters supplied mythological stories, gardens, still lifes and sacred imagery for rooms used in different ways. In the House of the Vettii, Priapus appears beside the entrance, while a frieze shows cupids performing activities such as wine production, jewellery making and the preparation of perfumes. A painted household shrine stood in the kitchen area. These images occupied particular places in the house and were encountered during movement, work and reception.

The garden paintings from Livia’s villa at Prima Porta surrounded a dining room with trees, fruit and birds. Their original panels are now displayed at Palazzo Massimo in Rome. Painted vegetation transformed the room’s enclosing surfaces into an imagined garden without requiring an actual opening through the wall.

Decoration also served rented housing. At Ostia, second-century apartments preserve painted interiors, and later work could cover or alter an earlier design. Painting was therefore commissioned for several forms of accommodation, alongside the costly programmes of large houses and imperial residences.

Renewal, survival and display

Redecoration could begin by roughening an older painted surface so that new plaster adhered to it. Successive layers preserve changes to both the room and its ornament. At Ostia’s Caseggiato degli Aurighi, altered rooms retain evidence of earlier paintings beneath later work.

The Vesuvian eruption buried walls and fragments that excavation later exposed. Surfaces displayed on site have often undergone stabilisation, cleaning or consolidation; detached paintings have been transferred to new supports in museums. Water, salts and loss of adhesion can damage both plaster and colour. A reconstructed room may combine ancient panels with modern supports and restored gaps, so its present enclosure differs from the building in which the painters worked.

For floor decoration, see Roman mosaics. Roman interior decoration places painting alongside stone surfaces, stucco and furnishings.