42. Virtual model of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, south wall of Room H. For the fresco fragment above the door, see fig. 43; for the panel on the right (west) wall, see fig. 40. The fragment of a painted column to the right of the door is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Gift of C. & E. Canessa, 1908 [08.264]).
who stands facing the entrance on the right end of the wall turns her head to look back and up toward the ceiling above Venus. With her right hand she props a polished shield on her knees, and the nude youth reflected in the shield’s convex surface also looks to the left, leading the viewer’s eye again toward the north. The painted architectural details continued onto the south wall of H (fig. 42), framing the two large windows and the door that gave onto the peristyle, above which a grimacing, wide-eyed mask of the goat god Pan (fig. 43) formed part of the frieze that encircled the room.
43. Mask of Pan. Fragment of a fresco from the south wall of Room H of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor. 16 ⅞ x 22 ½ in. (43 x 57 cm). Musée Bonnat, Bayonne (604)
26
The megalographia in Room H seems to have been not a narrative sequence but rather a series of scenes happening all at once. Figures gaze across the room, involved in a dynamic web of interaction, but the nature of that interaction remains elusive. Instinctively the eye tends to the center of an image, to things at eye level, and to the human form. In Roman rooms, however, viewers are rewarded by attending to apparently marginal details. In the upper zone of the north wall were three small pictures with wooden shutters (pinakes) propped on a golden cornice, each directly above a divine scene (figs. 44– 46, and see fig. 39). This fascinating trio offers one key to the artful cross-referencing within the room’s design. The pinax from above the reclining Bacchus depicts a seated female and an attendant with a shield between them, a miniature version of the central couple on the adjacent west wall, while the picture from above the Three Graces varies that grouping, with the woman sitting on a rock, a young male beside her, and an altar on the left. In the central panel of the upper register, directly above Venus, the shutters open to reveal a single female figure echoing the goddess below. The independent pictures thus corresponded to the “real” lifesize figures below. Visual links between the walls created by the echoing compositions and the gazes of the figures