Jan., 191 2. Antiquities from Boscoreale. 177 



Beneath the arch there is a rectangular box, the front of which has 

 the form of a frame with crossed ends. The outside of the box is 

 colored brownish yellow in front and reddish and bluish at the left end ; 

 the inside appears mainly as black with a dark red stripe above. Within 

 the frame are seen two masks. The mask on the left has plentiful bluish 

 gray hair. The round staring eyes and open mouth give to the pale 

 face an expression of terror and suffering. The other mask has yellowish 

 hair. Both masks are beardless. On top of the box stands a tall 

 slender yellowish vase with high vertical handles. Beneath the box 

 there is a sort of bracket ornamented at either side with a ball and disc. 

 It is probably conceived to be of metal. 



At the top of the fresco there is a garland consisting of two portions 

 of about equal length. The ends, which are violet-colored strings, are 

 fastened to the sides of the panel and the lower corners of an oblong 

 piece of some red substance, like cloth or leather, the lower edge of 

 which is drawn by the weight into concave shape. At the beginning 

 of the leafy part on each side there is a violet ribbon. On each garland, 

 near the middle, stands a long-legged bird, of grayish color, facing 

 toward the center of the panel. 



With these pavilions compare the projecting portico from Bosco- 

 reale published by Mau, Roem. Mitteil. XVII (1902), p. 186, fig. 1, and 

 a similarly placed portico with broken gable from the Casa del Labirinto, 

 Pompeii. 1 For the arch with spiral compare the examples from the 

 Casa di Sirico, 2 and the Casa di Giuseppe II? With the animals on the 

 roofs cf. Roux, op. cit. Vol. I, plate 20. A rectangular frame with two 

 masks, Nicolini, L Arte in Pompei, plate 4. 



Height, m. 1.23 (=4 ft. 0.42 in.). Width, m. 1.99 ( = 6 ft. 6.34 in.). 



The fresco is in poor condition. The plaster is much cracked and probably to 

 a considerable extent reset in the upper part, and is in many places reset and replaced 

 in the lower part. In front of the right pavilion a large piece of plaster is scaled to 

 a depth of about one-fourth of an inch. The edges of the upper layer reveal a rather 

 fine grayish plaster to which the black paint seems to have been directly applied. 



FRESCO. 24673. [Plate CXXIX.] 



Mural decoration of painted plaster. From the villa in which Nos. 

 24669, 24670 were found. 



The designs, which consist chiefly of fanciful architectural schemes 

 on a red ground, are bounded at the top by a white line near the upper 

 edge of the plaster, but are probably incomplete on the right side, and 



1 Zahn, Die schoensten Ornamente, etc. Vol. ii. plate 70. 

 1 Nicolini, op. cit. Vol. i, Casa di Sirico, plate 2. 

 * Roux, op. cit. Vol. i, plates 108, 106. 



