The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

This broad central space, both as regards its dimensions and decorations, is wholly copied from the Tablinum of the house of Apollo. The entire upper part is white, with delicate lines of blight colours forming elegant patterns upon it. In the centre of the ceiling, which is gently curved, is a naked Venus upon a green hippocamp or sea monster. A flying Cupid holds reins, and another flying Cupid holds a mirror with a long handle. Mus. Bor., vol. viii., tav. 10. Pitture d’Ercalano, vol. ii., p. 247. The ground of the original group, found at Herculaneum, is black. The Museo Borbonico text describes the second Cupid as holding an umbrella, but the form is peculiarly that of a mirror, and Appuleius, Met. 4, in his account of the train attending Venus as she proceeded to the palace of Oceanus, makes especial mention of one holding a mirror. The passage is so illustrative of the ideas of the age that produced these paintings, that some part of it may be transcribed with advantage. “The daughters of Nereus, too, were present singing in tuneful harmony; Portunus, too, rough with his azure-coloured beard; and Salacia, weighed down with her lapful of fish; with little Palaemon, their charioteer, upon a dolphin, and then troops of Tritons furrowing the main in all directions. One softly sounded his melodious shell; another with a silken canopy protected her from the sun; a third held a mirror, while others, again, swam yoked to her car.” The spandrils formed by the architrave of the peristyle and atrium are filled with green marine animals on white ground.