BOSCOREALE
（and Boscotrecase) Campania, Italy.
Subdivisions of Torre Annunziata lying N and
NW of Pompeii. Here a series of villas was excavated
between 1894 and 1903, following the discovery of the
Boscoreale Treasure of gold coins, jewelry, and silver
tableware in the “Pisanella Villa.” The silver (103 pieces
now in the Louvre) included a patera, with an allegorical
figure of Alexandria, and 16 cups, two of which are decorated with skeletons. Besides the treasure, many bronze
furnishings and utensils were found, some of which are
in Berlin; others, with parts of the decoration in the
Fourth Pompeian Style, are in the Field Museum in
Chicago.
The villa was a villa rustica producing oil, and grain,
and enough wine to have two presses and 82 dolia in the
court for fermentation. An apartment for the owner may
have been arranged in an upper story; except for a single
big triclinium in which were remains of couches, the
ground floor was given over to the necessities of the farm.
The plan of the villa and most of its companions varies
from Vitruvius' prescription for such buildings (6.5.3) in
having no atrium complex and it treats the peristyle as
a utility courtyard around which other units are grouped
in convenient blocks.
The Villa of Fannius Synistor of mid 1st c. B.C. is
famous for its Second Style decorations, the most important a cubiculum with large architectural vistas, now in
the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and an oecus,
divided between the Metropolitan and the Museo Nazionale, Naples, painted with large figures whose interpretation is much disputed. Pieces from other rooms are
widely scattered, and several disappeared after they were
sold in Paris in 1903. Most of these are architectural
decorations restricted in their development of the illusion
of depth. Here only the living quarters around a peristyle
were thought worth excavating, so the villa adds little to
our knowledge of working farms, but it shows evidence
of having been a big villa and an extensive property.
So little of the Villa of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase was excavated, and the loss of the rest in the eruption of 1906 was so final, that one can only speculate
about its magnificence. One suite of rooms has provided
us with Third Style decorations that rank among the finest
known; the varied treatment of landscape is particularly
interesting. These are now divided between the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Museo Nazionale,
Naples.
Of the other villas, in Contrada Centopiedi al Tirone,
in Piazza Mercato, and in Contrada Giuliana, only the
last was more than sampled. Built late and decorated in
the Fourth Style, it belongs in architecture and arrangements with the Pisanella Villa. Parts of its decorations
are in the British Museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. Héron de Villefosse,
Le Trésor de
Boscoreale (
MonPiot 5, Fasc. 1 & 2, 1899); A. Mau, tr.
F. W. Kelsey,
Pompeii: Its Life and Art (2d ed., 1902)
361-66; H. F. DeCou & F. B. Tarbell,
Antiquities from
Boscoreale in the Field Museum of Natural History
(Field Museum Publication 152, Chicago 1912); P. W.
Lehmann,
Roman Wall Paintings from Boscoreale in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (1953); P. H. v. Blanckenhagen & C. Alexander,
The Paintings from Boscotrecase
(
RömMitt Supplementband 6, 1962).
L. RICHARDSON, JR.
