La Domus dei "Putti danzanti" lungo la via Gemina: alcuni aspetti dell'apparato decorativo

The domus decorative apparatus reveals together a tendency towards conservatorisms and sobriety in the room layouts, especially in the first phase, in the first half of the fourth century A.D.; when in Rome changes in the layout of residential structures start appearing. The mosaic decoration, particularly the one of the home’s original phase, recalls models and shapes of clearly classic origins, both in the decorative choice of the central field and in the surrounding stripes, whereas the second stage seems to be characterized by choices more in line with the “fashion of the time”. Also the sculpture decoration seems to refer to preceding models, to the point of making one think of an overall decorative apparatus that is globally very coherent and definitely geared towards the recovery of the “old”. In the painting, next to a taste for plant subjects, it is worth pointing out the absence o walls to fake marble, actually greatly testified in Cisalpina between the third and the fourth centuries A.D. and in Aquileia in the panels at the Aula north in the Basilica Teodosiana, this one also from the beginning of the fourth century A.D.