After the fire of 64 A.D., which destroyed much of the center of Rome, Emperor Nero had a new residence built with walls covered in precious marbles and vaults decorated with gold and precious stones, so much so that it earned the name Domus Aurea.
It was designed by architects Severus and Celer and decorated by the painter Fabullus. The enormous complex included vast vineyards, pastures and woods, an artificial lake, treasures looted from the cities of the East, and precious ornaments, including a colossal statue of the emperor in the guise of the Sun god. Upon Nero’s death, his successors sought to bury and erase every trace of the palace.
The luxurious halls were stripped of their coverings and sculptures and filled with earth up to the vaults, and above them, the great baths of Titus and Trajan were built. In the valley below, the Colosseum was erected. The lavish fresco and stucco decorations of the Domus Aurea remained hidden until the Renaissance. Then some artists passionate about antiquity, including Pinturicchio, Ghirlandaio, Raphael, Giovanni da Udine, and Giulio Romano, lowered themselves from above into what they thought were caves, and began copying the decorative motifs of the vaults.
For this reason, the decorations were called “grotesques.” With the rediscovery began the problems of preserving the paintings and stuccoes, which quickly faded due to humidity and ended up being forgotten. Only after the findings of the frescoes of Pompeii did scholars once again take interest in the Roman grotesques, and in 1772 excavations resumed in the Domus Aurea.
