The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy buried the nearby towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in ash and debris in the year 79 C.E. The volcanic material preserved buildings around the Bay of Naples, including a villa near Pompeii, with this bedroom and its painted walls.

The painted walls transform this little room, opening it out in an expansive vista. On each side, a fictive wall appears to rise a few feet from the floor; red columns mounted on it frame the view beyond. Visual ambiguities tease the eye; the pillars and columns cast shadows, for instance. We’ve seen that before—picked up in the Italian Renaissance around 1400 years later. On the back wall, the artist painted glass vases and a fruit bowl sitting on shelves. And furthest on the right, a white archway with trelliswork surmounts a cave, where birds perch on the vines above a fountain.

Every part of this panorama is intended to give the semblance of reality, but it’s a special kind of illusion: the viewer is transported into a magical world, not a documentation of the actual site. This was a wealthy Roman’s comfortable country villa, and also a working farm. For the owner, the house provided a respite from the stresses of urban life. The painted scenery embodied a fantasy of abundance and control—appealing prospects in the first century B.C.E., when Rome was in political turmoil and the whole of Italy was wracked by civil war.