Profiles

Associate Professor HIMINO Natsuko

Affiliations :

Between real and represented places

My love for visual arts and sculpture has driven me to study the history of art at university. The vivid color and thematic variety of ancient Roman wall paintings fascinated me at first sight. I was especially intrigued by the garden paintings, or panoramas of garden scenes with trees, flowers, and birds covering sometimes the entire room, such as the garden frescoes from the Villa of Livia (now displayed in the National Museum of Rome). After completing my Master’s dissertation on Pompeian garden paintings, I wanted to know more about actual Roman gardens—particularly what the Romans saw behind those painted gardens. At that time, I had the opportunity to start my doctorate in Pisa, a Tuscan city famous for her leaning tower. During my four years of study in Pisa, I attended lectures on archaeology, epigraphy, history, and textual study—a precious experience that widened my perspective, which had previously been focused on art history. In my doctoral dissertation, I examined the Horti Sallustiani—a refined residence constructed by the Roman historian Sallust on the outskirts of Rome, usually translated as “gardens of Sallust,” although they are not exactly “gardens” in the modern sense—aiming at reconstructing the diachronic transitions of its space and ornamentation. Currently, I am interested in the relations between image and place, i.e., the spatial settings of artworks as well as their transfer from one place to another, as well as visual representations of places in media such as paintings, mosaics, and sculptures.

  • Research, History
  • Books, papers, etc.
  • Courses
    Aesthetics and History of Western Art (lecture, seminar)
    Personal History
    2017 Graduated from Faculty of Literature, the University of Tokyo
    2019 Received M.A. in Literature at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo
    Completed the doctoral program (without a doctoral degree) at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo
    March 2025 Received Ph.D. in Classics at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

    Career:
    June 2025 Appointed to current position
    Degree
    Ph.D. (Classics)
    Field
    Ancient Greek and Roman art and archaeology
    Research Subject
    Interrelationship of object, image, and space in ancient Rome
    Keywords
    Ancient Rome; reuse of sculptures; history of place
    Affiliation
    The Japan Art History Society; Collegium Mediterranistarum, Archaeological Institute of America
  • Academic Papers
    Natsuko Himino, "Three Classical Niobids from the Horti Sallustiani: Augustan Pedimental Group or Hadrianic Ensemble?," in Gianfranco Adornato, Miguel John Versluys, Suzan van de Velde (eds.), The Shock of the Old/New?, Brill. [To be published]
    Natsuko Himino, “The Garden Frescoes in the “House of the Golden Bracelet” in Pompeii: Workshop and Iconography,” Bijutsushi: Journal of the Japan Art History Society, Issue 192, 2022, pp. 187-202. [In Japanese, with an abstract in English]
    Natsuko Himino, Displicebat ei habitare in palatio. Horti Sallustiani: Topography, Textual sources and sculptures, 2 Vols, Doctoral Thesis, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Supervisor: Prof. Gianfranco Adornato), Academic Year 2023/2024, January 2025.