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MANN – The Secret Cabinet - I

The scene depicts a brown-skinned Satyr and a Maenad with a pale complexion having sexual intercourse (symplegma). The mosaic is made from polychrome tesserae: the central figures in the “emblema” are made in “opus vermiculatum”; the surrounding area is filled by using a coarser mosaic technique, “opus tessellatum”. The mosaic was found in the bedroom - cubiculum - of a Pompeian villa.

The Secret Museum or Secret Cabinet is the collection of Roman erotic finds discovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and now held in separate galleries at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

 

Source: MAN label

 

Roman mosaic

cm 39×37

Early 1st century BC

From Pompeii, "House of the Faun" (VI 12, 2).

Naples, National Archaeological Museum - Inv. no. 27707).

 

 

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Uploaded on March 27, 2025
Taken on April 21, 2023