A Pompeii cupboard sheds light on daily life

The cupboard was found in a house in the ancient city of Pompeii during excavations in Regio IX, insula 11. Around it, archaeologists recovered vessels, toiletries, coins and amulets, clues to how an interior was used and how everyday life was organised.

For artists, the value of such a discovery lies in the way it reveals life through traces, materials and use rather than through a reconstructed story. Toiletries point to care of the body, while coins and amulets suggest the overlap between household economy and symbolic protection, building a small domestic scene from ordinary objects.

For painters and draughtsmen, the interest is in the inhabited space itself: a piece of furniture, containers and small items left in place are enough to suggest human presence. Pompeii shows how the details of daily life can become exact visual sources, useful for thinking about composition, still life and the representation of intimacy.