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| | The display in this room is made up of items that allow the visitor to obtain at least a partial impression of the finishing and decoration of wealthy Roman houses. Here we can see part of a Roman mosaic floor from the late 3rd century A.D. It is semicircular in shape and represents a mythological scene: Hylas and the Nymphs. Placed along the walls are decorative sculptures and marble vases, as well as funerary urns. The decorative vase standing to the right of the door was found at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli near Rome. Another marble vase decorated with garlands and bucrania (ornament in the form of an ox or goat skulls) - the Piranesi Vase - was assembled by Giovanni Piranesi, an engraver and collector of antiquities, from an Ancient Roman altar and fragments of the handles from a 1st-century marble vessel. The marble candelabrum was put together from several parts of different date. In the centre of the room is Michelangelo's statue The Crouching Boy that came into the Hermitage from the collection of the British banker John Lyde-Brown. |
