Introduction

The paintings and stucco reliefs of the tombs of the Isola Sacra necropolis were discussed by Guido Calza in his book La Necropoli del Porto di Roma nell'Isola Sacra, published in 1940. It is a somewhat incoherent and superficial study. There is no recent overall, detailed study of all the paintings. The stucco reliefs were discussed by Harald Mielsch in his book Römische Stuckreliefs, published in 1975.

In this section we present, per tomb, the photos of the paintings and stucco reliefs taken by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD). These were taken not very long after the excavations, in the 1950s it seems, often with the paintings still in situ, sometimes after they had been taken to the museum. All photos are black-and-white. Some more photos of the ICCD can be found in the Virtual Museum, of some of the same paintings in a worse state of preservation.

Each description has a link to the overall description of the tomb in the section The Isola Sacra necropolis.

For tomb N we present an English translation of an article published in Dutch: Edu J.M. van Berkel, "Precursors of the Danaids: Comments on a tomb in Ostia", Hermeneus 58,5 (1986), 300-308.