| One of the frescoes, "Hippogryph", which was unearthed from the Casa Salese villa rustica. Accessed from the colonnaded central courtyard of the rustica, room eight has a decoration in the Third Style, with the middle zone panels showing on a white background single animals in movement (lion, hare, panther), removed from the wall during excavations to ensure their preservation. Such simple and essential decoration has frequent parallels in Pompeian paintings.
The panel, coming from the left side of the southern wall, displays a flying hippogryph. The hippogryph was the mythological offspring of a griffin and a mare. It thus has the head of an eagle, claws armed with talons, and wings covered with feathers, the rest of its body being that of a horse.
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