Curated by Annamaria Mauro, Massimo Osanna, Gabriel Zuchtriegel A journey into beauty between Pompeii and Basilicata, to tell the role of women in the ancient world, through ornaments and jewels, an expression of the aesthetic taste of different eras and contexts, but also a symbol of one social status. Thus the exhibition “From Matera to Pompeii. Journey into Beauty "set up at the Domenico Ridola Archaeological Museum from 18 November 2021 to 15 September 2022 - the result of the collaboration between the Ministry of Culture, the National Museum of Matera and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii - compares and combines two very different from each other and distant in space and time.

On the one hand, ancient Basilicata, influenced by the customs and fashions of the Greek colonial world, on the other Pompeii and the Vesuvian area, where Roman style and taste are well documented in the 1st century AD. golden world with the display of a red-figure vase from the Rizzon Collection of the Museum of Matera, which shows in the iconography the representation of jewels and ornaments, and two extraordinary finds from Pompeii: the fresco of a richly decorated winged Victory and the sensual statue of Venus from Oplontis, symbol of the exhibition.The path then continues with the comparison between the two realities. For the contexts of Materano (Timmari, Montescaglioso, Matera, Tricarico) the richest sources of knowledge of this aspect of ancient female life are funeral objects and sacred contexts. The precious finds show the particular attention that even the local populations had for taste and aesthetics from ancient times. Ornaments in glass paste, silver and gold, produced both in Magna Graecia and in the Eastern Mediterranean, were for women of rank elevated a real status symbol. The processing of particular materials, such as amber that was extracted in the Baltic Sea area and worked by Etruscan-Campania artisans, also indicates a thriving trade linked to this type of exclusive objects.

The materials from Pompeii and the Vesuvian area (Stabiae, Oplontis, Terzigno), belonging to more recent chronologies, fully testify the models of Roman culture and society of the time. These show precisely the abandonment of the rigor and austerity of the previous republican age, in favor of the display of luxury in the imperial age, for the emerging social classes. The most interesting aspect of the finds from Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, is precisely linked to the life of those who owned these objects. Many of these were still worn by those who fled and who had brought them with them in the hope of a future. In fact, the exhibition is closed by a copy of the cast of the girl from Villa B in Oplontis, on which the jewels adhering to the body can be admired.