A Pompeiian Cult, Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy, and Bronzes Galore in Naples

Plus, a naughty satyr scores with a she-goat in the archaeology museum’s porn gallery.

O n Thursday, I wrote about the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, but one story isn’t enough to cover what is an encyclopedia of everyday life in ancient Rome. About 10,000 people lived in tony, buzzing Pompeii when Vesuvius blew its top in a.d. 79. Nearly all fled as volcanic ash fell, first in flurries, then in a blizzard followed by gusts of carbon dioxide gas and waves of intense heat. Those who stayed, of course, died unpretty deaths. As much as 20 feet of ash buried and — miraculously — preserved Pompeii, which, over the centuries, was more or less forgotten. Excavations starting in 1750 made for an international sensation, and ongoing work today keeps finding surprise after surprise.

Pompeii tells us about ye olde Rome, but it’s an Enlightenment story as well. Its countless excavations were taken very seriously by the Italians from the start. Modern archaeology, scientific and painstaking, was born there. Italy can be a shambolic proposition, and there’s no shortage of theft, mishandling, and smuggling of antiquities, but Pompeii has been treated with the utmost care. Drones, satellite imagery, and ground-penetrating radar are among the state-of-the-art technologies used by Pompeii’s archaeologists today, but it’s really an international endeavor with lots of American participation.

Today I’ll look at the Villa of the Mysteries, which, if there could be a pièce de résistance at Pompeii, would have to be it. I’ll also write about the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, which has to be one of the world’s great museums. Pompeii, unlike Paestum, doesn’t have its own museum. While Pompeii’s hundreds of fresco paintings are still in situ, most everything else is at the archaeological museum. This includes astonishing bronze sculptures and mosaics.

The Villa of the Mysteries is located outside Pompeii’s old city walls — it served a working farm. At 40,000 square feet, it must have been a palace, but many of the spaces were back of house. It was discovered in 1909 but not excavated until the early ’30s. Why the delay? Italy is oft-convulsed. Long periods passed — the two world wars, for example — when little happened at the site. Mussolini, big on the glories of ancient Rome, accelerated the excavation’s timetable.

Discovered on the walls was a suite of frescoes depicting women performing rituals consistent with what scholars think was a secret cult possibly inspired by Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and ecstasy, among other things. The scenes, many believe, show the different stages of life of a proper Roman woman, from girlhood to marriage, children, and matronhood. Trials and tribulations are present, among them a flagellation scene for a bit of kink and a woman either running away in fear or warning of a calamity. The figures are set against a red background for extra drama.

The paintings date, given their figure style, to the first century b.c., so they would have been a hundred years old when Vesuvius buried them. They’re in an out-of-the-way part of the villa so access could be controlled. They’re cinematic, conveying a ritual as it unfolds. And it’s weird. There are satyrs, a phallus here and there, and a fat Bacchus. There’s so much we don’t know, but it’s good to be reminded that new spiritualism was in the air during Pompeii’s last years. The Roman gods were running out of gas. People were flirting with unorthodoxies all over the empire, including Jerusalem and that guy called Jesus.

I learned while I was there that they have to be treated regularly with antibiotics killing bacteria that like paint. Archaeologists are finding new things at Pompeii, but a big part of the park’s curatorial mission is the constant battle with decay.

The only quibble about Pompeii is access for mobility-challenged visitors. I’m no geezer, but some railings here and there would be nice. Right now, the place is a tort waiting to happen, but Italians don’t embrace tort law. “You’re on your own” is the mantra of this crazy place. My mother was Italian, and I have a big family in the Marche, and they agree.

On Thursday, I wrote about the House of the Vettii, in town, very grand, and just reopened after a 20-year renovation. Its wall paintings are restored, but the sculpture decoration is copied from originals kept at the archaeological museum in Naples.

Also at the archaeology museum is the Alexander Mosaic from around 120 b.c., originally the dining-room floor in the House of the Faun. Its shows a cavalry clash between Alexander the Great, looking like Errol Flynn, and Persia’s King Darius. It’s one of antiquity’s most cinematic mosaics. It’s got well over a million tiny blocks of colored tile in a palette as various as Benjamin Moore’s. With Pompeii’s 2.5 million visitors, it wouldn’t have been long before tourists with chisels and pliers wrecked it, bit by bit. Pompeii’s an open-air museum with typically lax Italian standards of security.

Naples surprised me. It’s far from lovely. Venice it ain’t. It’s a crazy, frenzied place, but there’s an inscrutable order to the chaos. I walked everywhere — except to Pompeii and Paestum — and saw no piles of trash and no Camorra shoot-outs. Drivers in Naples are better than Boston’s. They’ve got faster reaction times, and they don’t make an effort to hit pedestrians and other cars. I ate a pizza every night for dinner.

I saw Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy at the little church of Pio Monte della Misericordia, where it’s been since he painted it in 1607. Film noir was probably born in that big altarpiece. It’s mostly dark and spooky, with lightning-bright passages of narrative. Caravaggio compressed the Gospel of Matthew’s seven acts of mercy into one scene, here and there referencing stories such as “Roman Charity” — a daughter breastfeeding her starving, imprisoned father — and the rich St. Martin giving his fancy cloak to a beggar. Burying the dead is shown economically as a dead man’s pale feet exiting stage right.

The thing’s splendid. It’s best seen from the church balcony, which was closed — “in restauro” — the day I visited. That sometimes means someone didn’t show up or that the powers-that-be didn’t feel like unlocking the door. I bribed the guard to let me in. Looking like a simple country soul, and pretending I was hard of hearing, I didn’t seem a threat. Caravaggio’s painting is 13 feet tall and ought to be seen from above.

The archaeological museum surprised me in two ways. The collection is splendid, first of all. And it’s a modern, happening place programmed with enough events to fill a nearly 300-page, well-done annual report. Half the museum was closed — for 50 years — for a renovation, but it’s all open now. I visited the day after I went to Pompeii, which helped me better imagine the decorated Pompeii as opposed to Pompeii in ruins.

My visit to the archaeological museum in Naples gave me a taste of Herculaneum as well. A town not far from Pompeii, smaller and even tonier, Herculaneum was, alas, also closer to Vesuvius. It was buried in as much as 60 feet of ash and tiny bits of volcanic rock, a combination that promotes better preservation. The mix is harder to excavate as well, so much work remains to be done there.

Ancient Greek and Roman bronze statues almost always ended their lives in the smelter, reborn as weapons, so they’re rare. Rarity aside, I like them for their patina and lifelike look. Pasty Vermonter that I am, I envy tans. And the best-preserved bronzes have eyes made from marble, quartz, and obsidian for that penetrating, otherworldly gaze. The Herculaneum Runners are there, discovered in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, as well as The Drunken Satyr, Seated Hermes, and the two Dancing Danaids, female cult figures. Not everything is hardware. A blue cameo glass vase found in Pompeii is on display, and half a dozen galleries are devoted to Pompeii’s mosaics.

Pompeii silver, gladiator helmets, little bronze gods that decorated home altars, garden tools, and kitchen equipment are on display. A computer simulation gives a good idea of Pompeii’s and Herculaneum’s final hours, and a massive, 3-D, early-20th-century model of Pompeii in ruins suggests how big the excavation site is. Everything in the museum, display-wise, is well done. Interpretation is minimal, which is fine. Italians believe in sheer beauty and aesthetics. “When in doubt, look it up” is their pedagogy.

You don’t have to look anything up in the Secret Cabinet, the gallery displaying the museum’s collection of ancient pornography. The sculptures, mosaics, and wall paintings were found in Pompeii and Herculaneum and kept by the Bourbon kings and princes for their delectation. In addition to unifying Italy, Garibaldi decreed that the naughty art be put on display, which has been an on-again, off-again proposition since the 1860s. It depends, I think, on how Catholic Neapolitan museum officials want to be. Since around 2000, it’s been “not very.”

It’s all good fun and more obvious, even adolescent, than hardcore. It’s good to know the ancients had some fun before Vesuvius decreed “no more.” The gallery, the museum, and especially the site of Pompeii itself are advancing a new approach to archaeology. When archaeologists find a stash of buried coins, it’s not about the value of the gold or the silver, at least for scholars and the public. It’s not about accumulation or cataloguing or stuffing the vaults. It’s about the stories that the discoveries can tell us about the lives of people.