The "Sappho" fresco is a 1st-century AD painting from Pompeii depicting a young woman holding a writing tablet and stylus, symbols of literacy and education in Roman society. Though 19th-century scholars speculated it portrayed the Greek poet Sappho, modern scholars believe it's simply an upper-class Pompeiian woman. Discovered in 1760, the fresco is now housed at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples and notably inspired Chinese poet Shao Xunmei to take up poetry after he saw it in the early 1920s.
