{"title":"Gazelles (Gazella spp.) depicted in frescoes and sculpture from Herculaneum and Pompeii","authors":"M. Masseti","doi":"10.3366/anh.2022.0789","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Paintings and sculptures depicting gazelles ( Gazella spp.) are frequent in Ancient Roman art. Images of gazelles have been discovered during the archaeological explorations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ad 79. Two bronze statues of ungulates from the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, now on display at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (National Archaeological Museum of Naples), have not been correctly identified, consequently causing erroneous speculation about their cultural significance. The aim of this paper is to suggest which gazelle species inspired these artefacts, and to also discuss the wider context of the artistic representations of gazelles from Herculaneum and Pompeii and their surroundings.","PeriodicalId":49106,"journal":{"name":"Archives of Natural History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Archives of Natural History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.2022.0789","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Paintings and sculptures depicting gazelles ( Gazella spp.) are frequent in Ancient Roman art. Images of gazelles have been discovered during the archaeological explorations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ad 79. Two bronze statues of ungulates from the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, now on display at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (National Archaeological Museum of Naples), have not been correctly identified, consequently causing erroneous speculation about their cultural significance. The aim of this paper is to suggest which gazelle species inspired these artefacts, and to also discuss the wider context of the artistic representations of gazelles from Herculaneum and Pompeii and their surroundings.
期刊介绍:
Archives of Natural History (formerly the Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History) publishes peer-reviewed papers on the history and bibliography of natural history in its broadest sense, and in all periods and all cultures. This is taken to include botany, general biology, geology, palaeontology and zoology, the lives of naturalists, their publications, correspondence and collections, and the institutions and societies to which they belong. Bibliographical papers concerned with the study of rare books, manuscripts and illustrative material, and analytical and enumerative bibliographies are also published.