Vatican Museums: "The Aldobrandini Marriage," one of the works featured in "Rome: The Painting of an Empire."
ROME — Painting was more prized than sculpture by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and easel paintings more than frescoes, which were considered essentially decorative. Yet not a single easel painting of the kind described by Pliny the Elder in his encyclopedic “Natural History” of the first century A.D. has come down to us.