Dionysiac Frieze, Villa of the Mysteries

Around three walls of a single room in a villa outside Pompeii, life-size figures act out what is usually read as a woman's initiation into the mysteries of Dionysus, the wine god's secret cult. Against deep 'Pompeian red' the scenes unfold in slow, dreamlike sequence: a reading boy, a startled woman, a ritual flagellation, a dancer clashing cymbals. Buried by Vesuvius in AD 79 and dug out nearly intact, it survives as the finest cycle of Roman wall painting we have.