About the Collection
About the RWPI
The Roman Wall Painting Index (RWPI) is a digital collection of ancient Roman wall painting from the Bay of Naples. Most paintings date from the second century BCE to the first century CE, with a hard cut off at 79 CE. These paintings are amongst the few surviving examples from antiquity, preserved only due to the destruction of cities such as Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.
Historically, Roman wall painting has been a very spatially-organized field. Volumes such as ‘Pompei: Pitture e Mosaici’ (1990-2003) have organized paintings by find spot, grouping together frescoes from the same buildings, insulae, and regi. The RWPI seeks to provide a space for researchers to examine Roman wall painting not just through spatial realtion, but through subject and theme.
This project was created by Kathryn Spears for the final project of INLS 749, ‘Art and Visual Information Management’ at UNC Chapel Hill (Spring 2026). As of April 2026 it remains a work in progress.
Notes on the RWPI
The RWPI uses a series of controlled vocabularies derived from the Library of Congress (LOC) Name Authorities for its search and subjects feature. In most cases, the LOC prioritizes the Greek versions of Greco-Roman mythological figures, especially gods and goddesses. That said, the LOC also typically prefers the Roman spellings of those Greek names, resulting in the choice to use ‘Heracles’ instead of ‘Herakles’ (the fully Greek version) or ‘Hercules’ (the more common Roman version); or the choice to use ‘Dionysus’ instead of ‘Dionysos’ (Greek spelling) or ‘Bacchus’ (Romanization).
A complete controlled vocabulary used for this project can be accessed at the button below. It is updated as the RWPI is updated.
Contact
Contact information: Kathryn Spears, knspears@ad.unc.edu
Dept. of Art & Art History, School of Information & Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder
This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.
Using the CollectionBuilder-CSV template and the static website generator Jekyll, this project creates an engaging interface to explore driven by metadata.
