![]() correctly assumes a connection between the garden room, its decoration, and the rest of the villa (especially the laurel grove), but she does not bring anything substantially new to the discussion. In the remaining three chapters (“The Stuccoes” “The Twin Topoi” and “The Iconography of the Stuccoes”) R. Gabriel, upon inspection of examples of similar depictions at Pompeii, had earlier dismissed identifying this feature as a rocky edge, R. would have a stronger case for her view that it represents a stalactite-rimmed grotto (rather than the edge of a thatched roof) if she had mustered a series of comparable examples. One of her main points is that the paintings of Livia’s underground room represent a view from a grotto, which depends on her novel interpretation of the “fringe” at the top of the paintings in the underground room at Livia’s villa. describes at length other scholars’ arguments on the date of the villa, grotto typologies, and the date and function of the underground chamber at the villa. ![]() In the first three chapters (“Construction of the Villa and the Problem of Dating” “The Terminology of the Grotto” and “The Architectural Typology”) R. Unfortunately, R.’s work is weak and has editorial problems. Such a study is welcome since much scholarship has focused on the paintings in isolation (or on the equally famous statue of Augustus now in the Vatican Museum). ![]() proposes to show a relationship between the omen of the gallina alba, associated with the marriage of Livia and Octavian/Augustus and both the villa with its gardens and the underground chamber with its famous garden paintings. The author of the volume under review, Jane Clark Reeder (henceforth, “R.”), aims “to attempt an integration of the architecture and iconography” (p.7) of Livia’s villa at Prima Porta, also known as the villa ad Gallinas Albas.
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