Anatomy of a Roman Garden

 Roman murals have their own special style. Almost without exception, the not professional observer is also able to determine about a mural whether it is Roman. Art historians are able to write volumes about this elusive magic that pervades the murals because there is undeniably some magic in the thing.

  For me, paintings with a ‘garden’ theme are very nice. The nature that comes to life on the wall expands the space and brings nature to urban life. It always reminds me of the nature photos decorating the entire wall in old panel flats. Many homes with the same picture greet back to either an autumn forest or a palm-fringed beach. Still, they have something in common. It is the desire for the untouched, the escape, the deliverance from the prison that we humans have created for ourselves. A return to simplicity, to innocence, perhaps to the Eden.

  But the Roman gardens are not so much Edenic. Perhaps because they are not wild, they do not show the untouched forest, the abundance, the awesome forest of German folk tales full of giants, but a well-kept, tidy space. Nature here is apparently a man-made garden, a maintained and designed system. It’s like continuing the real garden. More bushes, more fragrant flowers, and forever cheerful birds. An idealized, an airily unlikely space in which, despite all its overflowing optimism, I would love to enter. In spite of all its impossibilities, they are such that one look at such pictures is enough, and the old gates squeak, I enter because I have to enter. Fairytale world. Where it's good to be.