Postcard from Naples, Italy: Frisky gods frolicked in the buff

Artemis of Ephesus, Goddess of Fertility, 2nd Century

In the mid-1700s, Charles III of Bourbon (1716-1788), King of Naples, began exploring the towns buried by Vesuvius and combined some of those finds with works of art he moved from palaces in Rome and Parma he inherited from his mother, Elisabeth Farnese (1692-1766), Queen of Spain. His son, Ferdinando IV (1751-1825), moved the treasures into a building that originally was a 16th-century riding school and later the university. Today the structure serves as the National Archaeology Museum or Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN).

The mosaics from Pompeii were my favorite part of the museum, but, unfortunately the galleries containing the largest mosaics were closed temporarily for renovation. No photos appear here of the outside of MANN because it was completely covered by scaffolding, possibly removed by now.

While ancient Romans favored wearings togas, tunics, stolas and pallas, many of their gods tended to frolic shamelessly in a bacchanalian existence, cavorting and coupling in fashions far from puritanical.

Atlas holding the celestial sphere, 2nd century

Kneeling Barbarian, 1st century

mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii

Pan

Artemis of Ephesus, goddess of fertility, 2nd century

Nilotic Landscape, mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii

Atlas holding the oldest known representation of the celestial sphere, 2nd century

cockfight mosaic

detail of Memento Mori, Pompeii, with death atop the butterfly representing the soul balancing on a wheel of fortune

fresco from Pompeii of the god Priapus, who threatens thieves with rape, is found in the Gabinetto Secreto

cockfight mosaic

Table support, 2nd century, Villa Madama. “On it is depicted the Homeric myth of Scylla gripping Ulysses’ sailors. The sea-monster that emerges from the woman’s body, her arm thrown haphazardly over her head, encircles in the loops of her fish-like tail the lifeless body of a man. Meanwhile the three dogs’ heads that emerge from her stomach wreak destruction on other shipwrecked sailors who struggle in the waves. A centaur is depicted on the opposite side… a small cupid seated on her back….”

Giant head of a horse, Donatello, bronze, 1456-1466

Sarcophagus with depiction of drunken Hercules joining Dionysus in a procession, 2nd century

Dionysus and Eros

Nilotic Landscape, mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii

Bacchus

Apollo Citharist

Athena Farnese, 430

Pan and Daphnis

Medusa from Casa dell Vestali in Pompeii

Eros with Dolphin, 2nd century

Meridian Line

This is evident throughout the impressive museum, but even more so in the Gabinetto Secreto, or Secret Cabinet. In this gallery clearly marked with a warning as to its mature content, one finds the more pornographic-seeming artifacts from Pompeii and erotic objects of the Borgia Collection. The only one of the above images shot in the Secret Cabinet is that of the enormously endowed god Priapus, kind of an X-rated scarecrow threatening evil-doers with rape.