probably ca. 1936 - 1939 when Nash was first photographing Roman towns - JK
per email from Jackie & Bob Dunn: "It is the marble lararium, with the scenes of the AD62 earthquake, found in the north-west corner of the atrium."
per email from Jackie & Bob Dunn: "Detail of marble lararium in north-west corner of atrium."
Story from The Times, 20 December 2023:
"Souvenir from Italy turns out to be priceless Pompeii relic
Marble relief bought by a Belgian family on holiday in 1975 had been stolen from the world heritage site
Bruno Waterfield, Brussels
Wednesday December 20 2023, 12.15pm, The Times
The marble relief was stolen from the house of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in 1975
It was only supposed to be a souvenir from a family holiday to Italy.
But now, some half a century later, Belgian police have been called in after a marble relief hanging in a residential Flanders home turned out to be a priceless relic stolen from Pompeii.
After his mother died Geert De Temmerman, 53, called in experts from a local museum to assess the artwork before putting the property up for sale.
Representatives from the Gallo-Roman museum in the nearby city of Tongeren were called in to look at a marble panel that had been mounted on the stairs to a basement garage since the 1970s.
“The next day the doorbell rang and the judicial police were there with a search warrant. We didn’t see that coming at all,” he told the Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper. It turned out the piece, estimated to be about 2,000 years old, had been stolen from the world heritage site.
De Temmerman’s widowed father Raphaël, 85, recalled the trip the family took to Italy. “We visited Pompeii, an ancient city from Roman history,” he said. “During the excursion I noticed that we were being followed by a man with a brown burlap bag.”
De Temmerman noticed that the contents of the bag “must be quite heavy”. He was approached as soon as the family left the site of the Roman city destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
“As soon as we left the site, the man spoke to us. He showed us his merchandise and kept repeating ‘money, money’. The bag contained scenes in stone, perhaps marble,” he said.
“I wanted a souvenir from Pompeii and I accepted his proposal. It was clear that the man wanted to get rid of his stones quickly. I really don’t remember how much we paid. But it was quite a lot — we put all our liras together to buy it. I was interested in the souvenir, I never wondered about its origin.”
Echoing that sentiment, his son said: “To be honest, we didn’t pay much attention to it in the years that followed.”
As it turned out the man wanted to sell it quickly for cash because the marble had been stolen from the house of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in Pompeii where it was hung above the house altar of the atrium. The slab probably depicts the earthquake that struck the city in AD 62, killing the Roman banker’s father.
“I can say that we are 99 per cent sure that it is an authentic marble piece,” said Bart Demarsin, head of exhibitions at Tongeren’s Gallo-Roman museum. “Quite a bit is known about how the piece was stolen at the time.”
The Limburg public prosecutor’s office has started an investigation but given the length of time since the marble was purchased illegally, any criminal charges are highly unlikely.
“Perhaps the man who sold it to us was the thief,” said De Temmerman’s son. “The piece will probably go back to Pompeii, because a replica now hangs there. We naturally hope for financial compensation. After all, we have kept the piece for so long and have taken good care of it.”
The Pompeii Archaeological Park regularly receives parcels containing archaeological finds that were taken, often during the 1970s, when people were less aware of the trade in stolen archaeological artefacts.
“I imagine that if those people go to Pompeii again, they will be welcomed there with the necessary respect once they have returned the lost piece of history,” said Jeroen Poblome, professor of Roman archaeology at Leuven University."
