In pictures: Ancient Roman paintings

This entire wall was detached in the 19th Century from a villa on the banks of the River Tiber.

It gives an idea of decoration in a well-to-do household during the age of Emperor Augustus (63BC-AD14).

Mythological scenes, many of them copies of lost originals from ancient Greece, were painted directly on to the walls inside painted frames.

The backgrounds are painted in black or in Pompeian red. The colours were made from ground up minerals and powdered semi-precious stones.