The Lineup: Passion, Transgression, and Mythical Women in Roman Painting BETTINA BERGMANN Mount Holyoke College
[email protected] Pasiphae, Phaedra, Scylla, Canace, Myrrha – five mythological women who commited crimes of adultery, incest, treason, bestiality, and suicide – once adorned the walls of a small room in a second-century villa outside Rome. About one third lifesize and dressed in pastel colors, each figure stood alone against a white background, identified by the Latinized Greek name painted beside her head as well as by a posture of distress and a tell- ing attribute of self-destruction. Today the five women hang in separate, gilded frames in the small Sala degli Nozze Aldrobrandini of the Vatican Museums, where they are routinely overlooked by visitors gazing at the more famous Roman frescoes above them, the Aldobrandini Wedding and the Odyssey Landscapes1. 1 — This was held as a keynote lecture at the conference “Feminism & Classics VII: Visions in Seattle”, in May 2016. I am grateful to Jacqueline Fabre-Serris and Judith Hallett for their invitation to publish it and to Kathleen Coleman, Susanna McFadden, and Claudia Lega for their help. The frescoes have received little scholarly attention: Biondi (1843) 14-25; Nogara (1907) 55-59; Andreae (1963) 353-355; Micheli (2010). Since my lecture a succinct description of the frescoes has been published in Newby (2016) 189-194. EuGeStA - n°7 - 2017 200 BETTINA BERGMANN This distinctive group poses an immediate question: why would a second-century villa owner wish to embellish a domestic space with five (and perhaps more) anguished females? To modern eyes it seems puzz- ling that interior decoration would showcase dangerous women holding the ropes and daggers with which they will shed their own blood.