The Gracious Art of Living | 'Pompei: The Art of Living' at Musée Maillol in Paris - WSJ.com

The introductory panel for "Pompeii: An Art of Living" at the Musée Maillol compresses 800 years of history into a few essentials: founded by Etruscans in the 7th century B.C., on a site overlooking the Gulf of Naples, the city was conquered by Greeks, Samnites and, finally, in 80 B.C., by Rome. Surrounded by rampart walls, the Roman colony—Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum—flourished until Aug. 21, 79 A.D., when it was suddenly buried six-meters deep in rock and ashes by the eruption of Vesuvius. Crystallized in time, Pompeii preserved unparalleled remnants of the art of gracious living in cosmopolitan Roman civilization.

Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei

A wine jug in the form of a woman's head

Judged by modern standards of comfort and hygiene, life would have been unbearable in medieval and Renaissance homes, as the show's catalog points out, but ancient Rome got a lot right: running water, central heating, municipal sewerage, airy atriums and interior gardens. With some 200 items—statues, furnishings, utensils, frescoes, jewelry—from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other Vesuvian sites, dated 1st century B.C. to 1st century A.D., the show offers a composite look at the decor of a Pompeian domus.

The main door usually opened onto a vestibule—the spaces giving on to the street were often rented to shopkeepers—leading to the central atrium, where the residents greeted guests and tended to business matters; the walls were frescoed, the floors paved with terracotta or mosaics, the roof had an opening that allowed rainwater to collect in an impluvium, a basin on the floor that fed an underground cistern. The exhibition's first gallery, with russet and black walls, is lined with customary atrium furnishings: marble statues of men and women, gracefully draped in togas, who might represent the family's ancestors; a marble table supported by four carved griffons; and frescoes depicting Dionysus/Bacchus with his golden drinking cup and the wind god Zephyrus with outspread wings. In a glass case, small bronze statuettes represent the household gods—dancing Lares brandishing cornucopias—and other protective deities, including Mercury and the Egyptian goddess Isis.

Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei/Fotografica Foglia\

A bronze brazier

Off the atrium, a nearly full complement of burnt-sienna and ocher walls was discovered in the triclinium, or dining room, of a country villa near Castellammare di Stabia; their frescoed panels portray Neptune carrying Amymone away on a galloping stallion, Dionysus and Ceres reclining on a seahorse skimming blue waters and a triumphal Dionysian procession led by a satyr.

It's a beautiful setting for the first of the splendid bronzes that are the unexpected stars of the show, their intrinsic beauty a confirmation of ancient Roman artistry. The bronze statue of a winged Cupid astride a diving dolphin supports a marble tabletop with a delicately inlaid bronze rim. The three bronze legs of a circular table have cloven hoofs for feet, and curve sinuously into horse's heads. A folding bronze tripod with elegant legs can be adjusted to hold basins of different sizes—and would look terrific in a Paris apartment today.

A stylized bronze tree 56.5-centimeters tall holds three small oil lamps hanging from curving branches—two of the lamps are in the form of snail shells, and one has a tiny horned snail peeking out. It's displayed upstairs along with kitchenware and tableware in the culinagallery, although it might have graced any room in the domus.

Along with a charming yellow ocher and blue fresco, part of a Lares altar found in a Pompeian kitchen, there are silver serving dishes and useful pottery platters and pitchers. But again, the best is in bronze: a kitchen scale with a bronze head for a weight, a fat pumpkin-shaped vessel standing on clawed feet, a sieve whose tiny holes form an intricate floral pattern and a remarkable cylindrical brazier with a classical double doorway for putting in coal, a cover with dolphin handles and a triton statuette on top.

Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei/Archivio dell'Arte/Luciano Pedicini

A bronze lampholder, with four arms, in the shape of a tree.

Pompeian society famously had its licentious side—not without humor—and some naughty bits are here too, including outrageously well-endowed satyrs and an amazing flying phallus with dangling bronze bells.

The show's only downside is that there isn't more of it, but there is an excellent short film downstairs (in Italian, with French subtitles) that uses digital technology to morph today's Pompeian ruins into fascinating visions of what they might have looked like on Aug. 20 of 79 A.D.

Until Feb. 12