Painting is so much more fragile than bronze sculpture or marble or even ceramics, and there is so little of it, which is one of the reasons that Pompeii has been such an important archaeological find.
Without the survival of these works buried under layers and layers of ash, we would have very little idea what Roman painting looked like at this period.
Portrait of a Young Woman (known as Sappho), c. 55–79 C.E.
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