It is extremely common for modern people to mistake ancient random portraits for celebrity portraits. This is partly because many of the famous writers and historical figures who lived in the ancient world did not have surviving portraits, and people were eager to find images that represented them. This was especially true for ancient women. I admit that I myself have some guilt about it; in the article I wrote about her in July, I couldn't find any decent image to represent Pamphile of Epidalos
So I used a bust photo of an unidentified woman
In the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, accompanied by photographs of the Ancient Theater of Epidaros to represent the ideas of the ancient Greek women of Epidaros.
In this article, there is a particularly ancient portrait that has been particularly widely mistaken for a portrait of a famous woman I want to discuss. The portrait in question is a mural. It depicts a woman with short brown hair, blonde hair mesh, gold earrings, and clothes dyed purple and green. She looked directly at the viewer, holding a wax plate tied with ribbons in her left hand and pressing a stylus to her lips in her right hand, as if contemplating. It can be traced back to between c. Discovered on May 24, 1760 in the Insula VI area of Pompeii in ancient Rome, 50 and 79 AD.
Classical scholars immediately began to speculate that the fresco might have been a portrait of the ancient Greek lyric poet Sappho of (born between 630 and 570 BC), who is now known for her poetry about love and attraction between women, and that her home island is the source of the contemporary word lesbian. (Whether Sappho himself is really lesbian is a topic I explored in depth in this article published in August 2021.)
.) The fresco is currently preserved in Room Seventy-Six on the first floor of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. It is still widely revered as an extraordinary portrait of a cultured ancient woman. Although the mural is still widely circulated online as a portrait of Sappho, art historians now generally believe that it actually depicts an unknown high-society Pompeian woman.
How do we know that this mural is not Sappho's
The first reason why the frescoes in Pompeii may not represent Sappho is because there is no evidence that it was Sappho's. It was found that the mural had no label or accompanying inscription to identify the woman, let alone identify her as Sappho.
In addition, the fresco does not correspond to known ancient portraits of Sappho. We know how Sappho was usually represented in antiquity, as there have survived depictions of her (based on traditional portraiture, rather than her actual appearance) that are clearly marked as her.
These marker descriptions of her are almost always depicted with harps and plucks to indicate that she was a lyric poet with musical accompaniment. There are no harps, plucks, or any other image that might imply that the woman depicted should be a poet or musician in the murals of the Women of Pompeii.
In addition, none of the proven ancient depictions of Sappho show her holding a crayon or stylus. In ancient times, people often used wax flakes and iron pens to write things for a short time. They usually use these tools to keep accounts, take personal notes, make grocery lists, and day-to-day affairs of this nature.
In contrast, when people read and copy literary works that should have lasted a long time, they would usually do so on papyrus rolls. So whenever Sappho shows objects related to writing and literature, she holds a papyrus roll, because that's the medium through which people usually read her poems.
Above: Photos from Wikimedia Commons
Sappho Painter's black graphic kalpis can be traced back to c. In 510 BC, it is now in the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland, showing Sappho holding a harp
Above: Photos from Wikimedia Commons
Brygos Painter's red drawing of the attic kalanthos dates back to c. Held in 470 BC, currently held at Staatliche Antikensammlungen, it depicts Sappho holding a harp and a pluck
Above: Photos from Wikimedia Commons
The attic red numerals trace back to c between Hydra. 440 and c. In 430 BC, it depicts Sappho sitting in a chair reading a poem of hers, surrounded by three women, one of whom holds a seven-stringed violin
Everything about the portrait of a woman holding a wax board and a stylus strongly indicates that she was a Pompeian woman of the first century AD. Her clothing and hair clearly reflect the Roman style of the mid-first century AD, and as I mentioned earlier, the stylus and tablet in her hand were accounting tools commonly used by the Romans in the first century AD.
The real conclusive evidence, however, is that the woman held crayons and stylus in almost exactly the same way as other portraits of known Pompeian women of this period. For example, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I wrote an article about ancient makeup in August 2021
There is another famous mural from Pompeii dating back to between c. In 50 and 79 AD, a baker named Terentius Neo and his wife are known to be depicted, whose name is unknown.
In the mural, Terentius Neo himself holds a roll of papyrus, indicating that he was an educated cultural man. Meanwhile, his wife gazed directly into the audience, holding a set of crayons in her right hand while pressing a stylus on her chin in a posture almost identical to that of the woman in the mural. Represents Sappho. It is clear that the cultured Women of Pompeii of this period were particularly eager to portray themselves in a way that demonstrated their literacy.
Above: Portrait of The Roman City of Pompeii, dating back to BC. In 50 and 79 AD, it depicts a woman holding a set of crayons and a stylus, and her husband is a baker named Terentius Neo
conclusion
If anything, the fact that the murals of women with tablets and stylus in Pompeii do not depict Sappho actually makes the murals even more fascinating. On the one hand, it clearly depicts a woman who is literate at a time when the vast majority of women are likely to be illiterate.
The ancient historian William H. William V. Harris, in his 1989 book Ancient Literacy, published by Harvard University Press, estimated that only about 10 to 15 percent of men in the Roman world were literate, compared with less than 5 percent of women. I suspect Harris somehow underestimated the universality of literacy, but there is no doubt that literacy is far from universal, even among the adult males most likely to be educated, and even rarer among women.
Another fascinating detail of the mural is that the woman appears to be depicted alone, without any male authority to accompany her — no father, no brother, and no husband. The Roman elite woman is almost always forced to marry by her parents in the mid to late middle and late stages, while the woman in the portrait may look like she may be in her twenties or thirties, so she is past the normal age of marriage.
She could be a widow, or an unusual unmarried elite woman, or a married woman who, for whatever reason, wanted a portrait without a husband. Or, the woman may not be a real individual woman at all, but an imaginary woman who represents some ideal. Ultimately, there are far more questions than answers about the woman in the mural.
I will notice, however, that the lady's thoughtful gaze and her curly hair remind me of painting a Young Woman by the French neoclassical painter Marie-Denise Villers in 1801. This is another striking example of independent female painting from more than 200 years ago, sometimes thought of as a self-portrait.
Above: Painting of a young woman, painted in 1801 by the French painter Marie-Denise Villers, may have been a self-portrait
(Note: I also posted a version of this article on my website titled "Why pompeii frescoes are not savoys.") This is a link to the version of the article on my website