The Flickr Cumae Image Generatr

Half-body portrait bust of a middle-aged togatus (a man wearing a toga) on a clipeus, carved in high relief. Found in the forum of ancient Cumae, Italy.

Roman, first half of the 1st century CE. Cumae, Italy.

Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN inv. 6729)

Closeup of the colossal head and torso of Jupiter Capitolinus - one of the Capitoline Triad, with Juno and Minerva - is made of white marble. However, as it was an acrolith, the bulk of the body, save the limbs, would have been made from wood (painted and/or covered in bronze or fabric clothing). The god would have been seated on a throne holding a scepter and a thunderbolt, conforming to the image of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the cult statue of the temple on the Capitoline Hill in Rome.

Roman, from the Capitolium (temple of the Capitoline Triad) in Cumae, Italy. 1st century CE.

Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

Remains of three colossal acrolithic statues of the Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. They were worshipped at the main temple of Cumae, based on the model established on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, with a triple cella, one for each god.

The statue of Jupiter would have been seated on a throne holding a scepter and a thunderbolt, conforming to that of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the cult statue of the temple on the Capoline Hill. The head of Minerva wore a tight-fitting helmet from which her hair emerged underneath, as seen here (without the long-lost bronze helmet - possibly mixed with other metals like gold, silver, or copper). The iconography of this Minerva draws on the statue of Athena made by the Athenian sculptor Eubulides (2nd century BCE).

As these were acroliths, only the head and the limbs were made of marble; the remaining parts of the body were made of painted wood, or were covered in clothing.

Cumae, Capitolium, 1st century CE.

Museo Archaeologico Nazionale di Napoli

6 febbraio 2025. Trema la terra nei Campi Flegrei, lungo sciame sismico in corso. Diversi eventi di media intensità, il più forte dei quali alle 8.52 di 3.1 gradi della scala Richter. Diverse scuole tra Napoli e Pozzuoli sono state evacuate.
Cambiamento quindi nel nostro programma di visite. Partiamo alla scoperta della grotta di Seiano, un traforo lungo 770 m, scavato in epoca romana nella pietra tufacea della collina di Posillipo, che congiunge la piana di Bagnoli con il vallone della Gaiola, passando per la baia di Trentaremi. Il primo traforo fù realizzato nel primo secolo D.C. dall'architetto Lucio Cocceio Aucto per collegare la villa di Publio Vedio Pollione e le altre ville patrizie di Pausilypon ai porti di Puteoli e Cumae. La galleria, orientata in direzione est-ovest, si estende per circa 770 metri, con un tracciato rettilineo ma una sezione variabile sia in altezza che in larghezza; dalla parete sud si dipartono tre cunicoli secondari, terminanti con aperture a strapiombo sulla baia, che forniscono luce ed aerazione. Caduta in disuso e dimenticata nel corso dei secoli, fu rinvenuta casualmente durante i lavori per una nuova strada nel 1841 e subito riportata alla luce e resa percorribile per volontà di Ferdinando II di Borbone. Nel corso della Seconda guerra mondiale fu utilizzata come rifugio antiaereo per gli abitanti di Bagnoli.

SEIANO CAVE
February 6, 2025. The earth trembles in the Phlegraean Fields.
Several medium intensity events, the strongest of which at 8.52am measured 3.1 on the Richter scale. Several schools between Naples and Pozzuoli were evacuated.
Therefore change in our visit program. We set off to discover the Seiano cave, a 770 m long tunnel, dug in Roman times in the tuff stone of the Posillipo hill, which connects the Bagnoli plain with the Gaiola valley, passing through the Trentaremi bay. The first tunnel was built in the first century AD. by the architect Lucio Cocceio Aucto to connect the villa of Publius Vedio Pollione and the other patrician villas of Pausilypon to the ports of Puteoli and Cumae. The tunnel, oriented in an east-west direction, extends for approximately 770 metres, with a straight route but a section that varies in both height and width; Three secondary tunnels branch off from the south wall, ending with openings overlooking the bay, which provide light and ventilation. Having fallen into disuse and forgotten over the centuries, it was discovered by chance during work on a new road in 1841 and immediately brought to light and made passable by order of Ferdinand II of Bourbon. During the Second World War it was used as an anti-aircraft shelter for the inhabitants of Bagnoli.

Caryatid holding a sacrificial vessel in her right hand. The statue belongs to the portico of the Caryatids built in Pozzuoli in imitation of the Forum of Augustus in Rome to celebrate the foundation of the “Colonia Iulia Augusta Puteoli”.
The statues of the Caryatids were displayed alternating with “clipei” and, like all the copies of the Roman era so far known, faithfully reproduced in style and size the Caryatids of the Erechtheion in Athens.

Terrace of the Aragonese Castle
Augustan imperial era
Archaeological Museum of the Phlegraean Fields - Baia Castle

Caryatid holding a sacrificial vessel in her right hand. The statue belongs to the portico of the Caryatids built in Pozzuoli in imitation of the Forum of Augustus in Rome to celebrate the foundation of the “Colonia Iulia Augusta Puteoli”.
The statues of the Caryatids were displayed alternating with “clipei” and, like all the copies of the Roman era so far known, faithfully reproduced in style and size the Caryatids of the Erechtheion in Athens.

Terrace of the Aragonese Castle
Augustan imperial era
Archaeological Museum of the Phlegraean Fields - Baia Castle

The head, portraying an adult male character, belonged to a toga-wearing statue, which must have been placed in a niche or against a wall. The facial features are outlined with great care.
The sculpture was found in the southern portico of the forum, in the area of the sacellum of the “Genius Municipii” dedicated to the Cumae “Municipes” (citizens of cities different from Rome). The “sacellum” was created by the magistrate C. Iulius Primigenius in accordance with the final wishes of his son.
Today many scholars believe that the identification of this portrait with the magistrate C. lulius Primigenius, an identification advanced at the time of its discovery based on the place where it was found, is not verifiable.

Pentelic marble sculpture
Height 32.5 cm.
First half of the 1st century AD
From Cuma, Forum southern portico
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv. No 151074

Urn with an ovoid body decorated with four horizontal registers delimited by thin raised cords: three have a vegetal decoration, the fourth one a baccelatura motif. In the second register two vegetal shoots, one of oak with acorns and the other of ivy with corymbs, develop intertwining. In the underlying register, a sinuous vegetal shoot characterized by five-petalled flowers.

Luni marble urn
Height 42 cm; diameter 35 cm; lid: diameter of the lid 22 cm.
Second half of the 1st century AD
From Cuma, Necropolis of Porta Mediana
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle

The head portrays a male deity, with a calm expression. Long and thick curls, divided into tufts, frame the face, leaving the forehead, furrowed by a wrinkle, free. The brow ridges are outlined with small incisions, the almond-shaped eyes are shaded by deep orbits. The softly modeled cheeks are marked by labionasal wrinkles. As if he were about to utter a word, the fleshy mouth opens showing the upper arch of the teeth.

Source: Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei – Vol. 1 – Cuma

Pentelic marble
Height 33 cm, width at the cheekbones 12.5 cm.
Hadrian-Antonine age
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv. no.150239

Long locks of hair falling over the ears and the nape of the neck cover the bearded head rendered with ideal features. The iconographic type to which the sculpture belongs is known from a replica that was in Palazzo Barberini in Rome, and now is part of the Milles collection in Stockholm. The original, attributed to sculptors close to Phidias, has been referred to the monument of the eponymous heroes in the agora of Athens, erected to celebrate the democratic institutions of the city in the twenties of the fifth century BC. This monument showed on a long base the larger-than-life-sized bronze statues depicting the ten heroes chosen by the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, to give their name to the tribes of Athens.
Peculiar formal characteristics of the sculpture allow us to attribute the Cumae replica to the "workshop of Baia", whose repertoire was renewed in the Hadrian age through the adoption of Attic models of the late-Severe style.

Source: Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei – Vol. 1 – Cuma

Pentelic marble
Height 31.5 cm, width 15 cm. Hadrianic Age Museum
Hadrian-Antonine age
Attributed to The Baia Workshop
From Cumae, Crypta Romana (?).
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv. no.150240

The face is framed by wavy hair, divided by a central parting into thin locks held by a thin taenia at the nape of the neck. The almond-shaped eyes are framed by slightly arched eyebrows, the nose is straight, the mouth full.
The face is the replica of a standing female figure dressed in a Doric peplos, known as Peplophoros Candia-Ludovisi type. The only complete copy of the head, today exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, was recovered in the island of Crete. The original in bronze, larger than life-size, has been attributed to an artist from the Peloponnesian environment active around 460 BC.
The sculpture is ascribed to the activity of the " Baia workshop". This replica was probably recovered during the excavation of the "Crypta Romana", the tunnel from the Augustan era, about 180 meters long, designed and built by Cocceius in 37 BC. This opera dug in an east-west direction under the acropolis of Cuma was a portion of the military path created to facilitate the connection between the "Portus Julius" and the port of Cuma .

Source: Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei – Vol. 1 – Cuma

Sculpture in Pentelic marble
Height 28 cm, width at the cheekbones 12.2 cm.
From Cumae, Crypta Romana
Hadrianic Age
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv. no. 153655

Face of an adolescent turned to the left with a slight inclination of the head. The hair is rendered with curl-shaped locks and, in the center of the forehead, is arranged in a "swallow tail". The brow ridges shade the almond-shaped eyes, the cheeks are soft, the mouth, small and fleshy, has a slightly retracted lower lip, the chin is round, the neck is thin.
Despite the usual uncertainty that accompanies the identification of portraits of the members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, whose idealized features were supposed to demonstrate their descent from Augustus to legitimize their aspirations to dynastic succession, this portrait has been recognized as an effigy of the young Caligula, son of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder.
The portrait was probably part of an imperial gallery exhibited in Cumae, and intended to celebrate the Julio-Claudian princes.

Source: Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei – Vol. 1 – Cuma

Pentelic marble sculpture
Height 26 cm; width at the cheekbones 12.7 cm.
Tiberian Age
From Cumae, Crypta Romana
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv. no. 150226

The full and roundish face, slightly tilted to the left, shows the features of a seven-eight year old child. Despite its poor state of preservation, we can appreciate the cut of the eyes, large and clearly outlined, shaded by the wide eyebrows, and the dimples at the corners of the mouth. The forehead is framed by small, crescent-shaped locks that open in a slightly off-centre swallow tail towards the right eye. The hairstyle with locks of the fringe arranged in a swallow tail was introduced by Augustus, and became, in the propaganda through images pursued by the emperor himself, a precise dynastic reference for the subsequent members of the Julio-Claudians.
Due to his physiognomic characteristics, the young man portrayed here could be a member of the imperial family for whom an official portrait was planned at a very young age.
These facts lead us to take into consideration the direct grandsons of Augustus, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, in particular the first type of Lucius.

Source: Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei – Vol. 1 – Cuma

Pentelic marble sculpture
Height: 31.5 cm
Early 1st century AD
From Cumae, “Masseria del Gigante”
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle

Rectangular slab, with a convex profile, decorated with a trireme. The ship is depicted with an “acrostolium” with a volute curled inwards and, at the stern, with a “rostrum” with three swords. The hull is protected by longitudinal beams.
The ship moves to the right pushed by the triple row of oars; two reliefs depicting the icon of a deity and the head of Medusa are carved at the bow; at the stern rises the “stylis” with the flag. In addition to the helmsman (“gubernator”), seven naked rowers and a figure at the bow appear as members of the crew.
This and the slab inv. no. 6600 belong to a funerary monument with a circular drum. The two slabs, probably, recall the feats accomplished by the military fleet stationed at Miseno in the last decades of the 1st century BC.

Marble bass-relief
Height 95 cm; width 82 cm
Late 1st century BC
From Fusaro lake
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv.6601

The trireme is depicted with an “acrostolium” with a volute curled inwards and, at the stern, with a “rostrum” with three swords.
The hull is decorated with a cornucopia at the bow and a vegetal raceme motif at the stern. The ship moves towards the left, pushed by the oars that appear to be inserted under the protective case (“parexeiresìa”). On board, five naked rowers are engaged in the navigation maneuvers, together with the helmsman and the rower.
This and the slab inv. no. 6601 belong to a funerary monument with a circular drum. The two slabs, probably, recall the feats accomplished by the military fleet stationed at Miseno in the last decades of the 1st century BC.

Marble bass-relief
Height 84,5 cm; width 79 cm
Late 1st century BC
From Fusaro lake
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv.6600

The lekane has a truncated-cone shaped lid with a circular handle. The lower part of the vase body is black; immediately below the rim there is a band decorated with alternately straight and inverted palmettes.
On the lid, a half-naked woman and a man sit facing each other. Two women full dressed carry a box from which hangs a long, richly decorated band. They appear to be moving quickly away from the two seated figures.
Behind the seated woman, Eros, leaning forward, seems to talk to the female figure moving towards the seated man. Both the seated woman and Eros are holding a mirror in their hands.
In the spaces between the figures, a large alabastron, a basket, a box and an oval object (cymbal?).
The figurative field is framed by an oval motif.

Red-figure lekane.
Bathtub reconstructed from multiple fragments. Lid intact
Height 15 cm; lid diameter 22 cm.
Late V – early IV century BC
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv.128119

Amphora with cylindrical neck and disc-shaped rim, distinct shoulder, ovoid body, disc-shaped foot, and a vertical handle arranged transversally on the mouth.
Side A: the painting shows a naked satyr, with sandals and a cloak draped over one arm. He wears two garlands of ivy, one on his head and the other across his torso. He wears a bracelet on his wrist and a lace on his thigh. He holds a situla and a thyrsus. In the field, at the top, a dotted rosette, at the bottom, a cymbal; a branch and the design of the uneven ground indicate that the scene takes place outdoors.
Side B: female figure portrayed in left profile, wearing a cloak and a diademe.
Extensive use of white and yellow overpainting. Palmette and racemes on both sides of the vase.
This vase is attributed to an artist near to the workshop of the so called “CA Painter”, a Campanian red-figure vase-painter whose name is unknown. Consistent individual stylistic characteristics of the survived artworks suggest the existence of an artistic personality operating at Cumae in the mid 4th century BC as founder of a vase painting style. Trendall called him the CA Painter because he was the chief painter in the first stage of Cumaean red-figure vase-painting, the initials standing for Cumaean (C), and first stage (A).

Red-figure bail-amphora
Height 49.5 cm, body diameter 13.8 cm, rim diameter 11.4 cm,
Attributed to the workshop of the CA Painter
350 – 325 BC
From Italic necropolis – Camber tomb (GABRICI CLXXXV)
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv. no. 128008

Cumae was founded as a colony of Chalcis. According to legend, the founders of Cumae were the Euboeans of Chalcis, who, under the leadership of Hippocles of Kyme (it is debated whether it was Euboean Kyme or Aeolian Kyme) and Megasthenes of Chalcis, chose to land at that point on the Tyrrhenian coast because they were attracted by the flight of a dove or, according to others, by the clash of cymbals.
The inscription: XENOPHANTO EMI «I am from Xenophantos», scratched under the foot, is engraved with letters typical of the Euboean alphabet used in Cumae, thus supporting the Euboean origin of the colony.

Attic kylix with black varnish
Height 8 cm, diameter 14 cm, base diameter 6.4 cm, height of letters 0.5 cm
500 BC Approximately
Cumae, Fondo Scala necropolis
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle – Inv. no. 139562

No. 7: fragment of a female face.
The nose, part of the mouth and the left cheek are preserved. The face has a pinkish color with brownish spots applied over a layer of whitish preparation. The lips are red with purple lines. The red is also used for the S-shaped curls of the hair painted on the cheek.

Height 10.0 cm; width 11.0 cm;

No. 13: Bearded male head with helmet.
The mouth, small, has full lips framed by a thick beard; it is open and allows a glimpse of the upper dental cloister. The eyes are small and sunken at the sides to highlight the shape of the eyeball. The thick hair splits into two tufts on the forehead. The neck, well marked, shows a torsion.
The face has an orange complexion, eyes and eyebrows are outlined in purple, iris and pupils are engraved. Beard and hair are rendered in red.

Height 21.5 cm; width 13.5 cm;
340 – 320 BC
From Cumae Temple A
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle

The amphora is characterized by a black band made mouth, a distinct neck marked at the bottom by a ring step, an ovoid body with a three bands decoration, a suction pad, and circular section handles.
On the neck, palmettes and lotus flowers rendered in black, in overpainted purple red and incised lines.
On the shoulder, a wide band decorated with a polychrome tongues pattern.
On the Side B main register, sequence of six hoplites, facing left, with shield, spear and crested helmet; on side A, a rooster between two sphinxes.
Under the figurative field, a wide black band between two purple lines. In the lower band a ray decoration.

Attic black-figure amphora
Height 33.8 cm, mouth diameter 13.4 cm.
Ca, 560 BC.
Cumaean collection, inv. 85844
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei - Baia Castle