EuropaANCIENT

Europa riding the bull, from Pompeii, The House of Fatal Love (aka The House of Jason) (IX, 5, 18), mural fresco extracted for museum display, ca. 80 BCE, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 111475

This and two other fine paintings were included in the same cubiculum — "Hercules and Nessus" and "Pan Piping for Nymphs". Elsewhere in the same house was found the aesthetically similar "Jason and Pelias", which gives the alternate name to the house. As a whole, the paintings project a feeling of calm, majestic landscape within an interior space, a bedroom. Thematic connections among the topics chosen for display may or may not exist. "The painting of Europa has a different resonance in this context... Looking at images of myths in museums can make them seem like mere decorations." (H. Morales Classical Mythology, 21.