Les motifs dionysiaques envahissent les décors des maisons pompéiennes et romaines de la fin de l’époque républicaine. Ils se déclinent entre des éléments dits décoratifs, regroupant une variété de signes, attributs et personnages, et les ensembles les plus achevés, comme la Villa des Mystères. Ces scènes cultuelles, mythiques ou génériques caractérisent ce que l’on a pu appeler des «atmosphères dionysiaques » , sans qu’ait jamais été défini le degré de signification religieuse de ces environnements. L’étude contextuelle de plusieurs maisons éclaire la relation entre image et imaginaire, dépendant des programmes iconographiques et de leur disposition à l’intérieur de l’habitat : ils reflètent un usage culturel de l’image «religieuse » , intégrant la représentation dionysiaque comme le marqueur, voire la revendication d’un mode de vie à l’hellénistique, centré sur la luxuria et l’otium.
The decoration of the Villa of the Farnesina, designed in early Augustean Rome, displays a complex system of artistic and religious references to Greek culture. By means of an eclectic collection of artistic replications and emulations spread out through art galleries painted in trompe l'oeil, artists and owner reached a new style based on the appropriation of the conquered world, very carefully organized into a cultural hierarchy. The arts of classical Athens, embodied not only stylistically, but also thematically, are reproduced as framed pictures, whereas those of Hellenistic Egypt are integrated into the imitation of architecture. Dionysiac imagery functions as a paradigm of this system, at least in the preserved part of the villa: instead of losing divine prestige after Augustus's victory at Actium and his assumption of sole power in 31 BCE, Dionysos appears as one of the main keys to the whole decoration – as a sign of Greek cultures, assimilated for their familiar exoticism, into the new imperial language.
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