Object
Garden Fresco in the Villa di Livia in Prima Porta near Rome
Located in an underground room of 12 by 6 meter

Dating
c. 40 BC

Artist
Unknown

Species
At least 23 Mediterranean plant species
80-85 depictions of birds (73 preserved), belonging to about 40 species, half of them being identifiable

Source
Mielsch 2001

Literature
Mabel McAfee Gabriel: Livia’s Garden Room at Prima Porta, New York 1955.

Antero Tammisto: Birds in Mosaics. A Study on the Representation of Birds in Hellenistic and Romano-Campanian Tessellated Mosaics to the Early Augustan Age, Rome 1997.

Harald Mielsch: Römische Wandmalerei, Darmstadt 2001.

Salvatore Settis: La villa di Livia. Le pareti ingannevoli, Milano 2008.

William Fitzgerald: Variety. The Life of a Roman Concept, Chicago 2016.