Faces of Ancient Europe: Emperor Nero’s Golden House (Domus Aurea)

Faces of Ancient Europe: Wonders of the Domus Aurea (Paintings from the Nero’s Golden House) The Domus Aurea (Latin, “Golden House“) was a vast landscaped palace built by the Emperor Nero in the heart of ancient Rome after the great fire in 64 AD had destroyed a large part of the city and the aristocratic villas on the Palatine Hill. Here are some splendid tempera on paper paintings, which provided the originals for the engravings in “Vestigia delle Terme di Tito e loro interne pitture”, published by Ludovico Mirri in Rome in 1776. The artists behind the sixty-one illustrations in the book are Swiss-Italian architect Vincenzo Brenna (1741-1820), who worked very much in the Russian Empire, and Franciszek Smuglewicz (1745-1807), a Polish painter who lived in Rome from 1763 to 1784. In very complex conditions, the two artists copied the paintings of Nero’s Domus Aurea – which at the time was still considered as one with the Baths of Titus, hence the name of the book. The engravings translating the two artists’ drawings are by Marco Carloni (1742-1796). Watercolor paintings of the Domus Aurea in the National Museum in Warsaw is a collection of 60 plates from a coloured portfolio Vestigia delle Terme di Tito. This set showing paintings from the Nero’s Golden House (Domus Aurea) was created by Vincenzo Brenna, a Roman architect, a Polish painter and draughtsman Franciszek Smuglewicz, and Marco Gregorio Carloni, a Roman engraver specialising in engravings of ancient monuments. Song: Ross Bugden - Interstellar (Copyright and Royalty Free) Google Photos Album #AncientRome #EmperorNero .