"This book is the first general history of Roman painting written specifically for English-language readers. Large numbers of wall-paintings have survived from the Roman world, and particularly from Rome itself and from the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79; they include examples of elaborate decorative schemes as well as mythological pictures, landscapes, still lifes, and scenes from everyday...