I was a bit skeptical when I booked the tickets back in April. Like many Brits, I've wandered Pompeii's streets and consumed the steady diet of Vesuvian documentaries that regularly pop up on TV. I've wandered though many stately homes with 18th century rooms inspired by the excavations. But being more than a bit of a Roman geek, I've also matched visits to the ruins with long hours in the crumbling but still noble Naples museum, where much of the loot hauled out of the excavations now lives. And I've spent many happy visits to LA wandering about the Getty Villa in Malibu, where a vast American fortune allowed a vivid re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri stuffed with collections from the digs.I'm always happy to potter around galleries of ancient Roman decor, but I wasn't expecting anything new. Happily, I was wrong.
The show is aptly named. Life and death in Pompeii, focusing heavily on the first part. Its familiar premise is that much of what we know about the realities of day-to-day life in the Ancient Roman world is thanks to the snapshot-in-time created by Vesuvius' eruption. It then goes on, through its collection of objects, clever videos and clear explanations, to lay out just what that daily life was all about. The floorplan of the show is loosely based on that of the House of the Tragic Poet; outside its gates we learn about life in the broader city, and once within each room we dig into what actually happened there.
The common-sense logic of this set up gives context to the objects and brings the people who used them to vivid life. This is exactly the approach that's missing in Pompeii itself. It would add relevance and context to what you see there, and I can only hope the site managers take some inspiration from this show.
In the bedroom, we see a richly-ornamented bedpost and a luxurious trunk for storing clothing alongside cosmetics and toiletries, decorative geegaws and erotic wall paintings. In the atrium, the lares (household gods) next to the small house altar. In the garden, garden statuary, including an amazing, life-sized marble figure of a pudgy toddler with enough remaining paint to show how realistic he would have been when new. There's a bird bath, pipes demonstrating how the water feature worked and three large, frescoed walls showing how the Romans used interior design to carry the garden from the outside, in.
In the fascinating kitchen section we see ovens and cookware. Make the pots and pans out of stainless steel and they would be recognisable in our own kitchens today. They're next to a larder of carbonised food. Plates of figs, loaves of bread, bowls of nuts. Here, an example of the interesting little titbits that made this show fresh. We see chamber pots along with food prep. Why? The Romans put two functions that produced waste next to each other. It seemed logical. Despite their sophisticated take on medicine and their obsession with baths, they never realised this was a bad idea, and thus disease remained much higher than you would have expected from an otherwise well-sanitised society.
Next door, the dining room's collection drove home how the Romans loved to entertain, and decorated to impress. Lavish sections of frescoed walls stand beside beautiful mosaics. In one, a skeleton holding wine jugs encourages diners to carpe diem, because life is short. In another, a lifelike aquarium of clearly-recognisable fish swims across the floor, hinting at what's soon to be on the plate. It was probably waiting in the cylindrical, ornamental food warmer on one side, next to the lavish lamp.
Of course, death is in the exhibition title as well, and it doesn't take much to paint a poignant story.
There's the familiar plaster cast of the guard dog writing in pain, and an equally familiar cave canem mosaic. I hadn't realised until this show that he'd been found atop the mosaic where, of course, he probably lived. In the bedroom section there's a carbonised cradle. A beautifully simple little rocker that could come from any house from the ancient world to today. The label tells us that the carbonised infant was found inside. The baby's not there for the show, but she doesn't need to be. Your imagination does the work for you.
Most haunting, however, is the family group at the end. More plaster casts, made from the voids left by the disintigration of heat-blasted bodies inside hardening lava. There's the father, caught in the action of falling backwards. A boy, perhaps three, collapsed on the floor, creases of his clothing preserved in the cast. You can imagine his cries. Between them, the mother, on her back, trying to console another child, who's reaching up. Screaming. Scratching the walls of the cubicle they were hiding in. Trying to get out. Not statues, but people just like us.All those rooms of familiar household items brought it home. People just like us. Snuffed out, yet immortalised, in a crazy burst of tragedy. The curators did just one thing wrong. I would have ended by putting that wine-bearing skeleton next to the family. Seize the day, for you know not what tomorrow brings.
Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum is at the British Museum until 29 September. Advance tickets are now sold out for the run of the show, but they release 500 a day for walk-ups. Get there when the museum opens.
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