Archiving some thoughts I threw up on FB earlier this week for future reference. All images borrowed from a BCC news story.
Things I love about this new Pompeii fresco showing Paris inviting Helen to Troy:
1) The dog knows this is a terrible idea. Dogs are often symbols of fidelity and this one know marital trust and guest-friendship are both about to be broken. He breaks the fourth wall and gives us the viewer a knowing glance. [On dogs as such symbols]
2) The lady-in-waiting (slave?) knows too. This reminds me that hardworking girl on the skyphos who gives side eye to the Athenian wife getting drunk in her own store room.
3) Helen’s profile, hair, jewelry looks an awful lot like the so called painted portraits of Cleopatra (VII).
4) Paris’ eastern costume looks less silly than in most cases. The color block squares and the overall get up even how he holds his shepherd’s crook all have a more exotic dignified look… [compare say the costume of Ascanius from Pompeii IX.13.5]
I’m curious about the identification of the woman on the Omphalos as Cassandra. Cassandra has a clear iconography for her rape by Ajax, but seated on an Omphalos? I don’t have a parallel. I associate the Omphalos with Delphi so my first thought was the Pythia. I did waste a little time with the LIMC before posting this. I learned that Cassandra poor thing doesn’t get her own entry but rather appears with all the men who fucked up her life. Seems an injustice…
On FB some agreed with me, others pointed out that Cassandra fits better with theme of room as a whole (as we understand it at present) and suggest the omphalos could just represent her gift of prophecy.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 
Totally agree about the omphalos. That was my first thought. How can that mean anything but Delphi?