Discerning home owners have chosen to decorate their dining rooms in "Pompeiian red" for centuries, after it was discovered on paintings amid the ruins of the Roman town.
But new research indicates that their efforts may have been misguided – and that the brilliant hue featured in the frescoes may originally have been yellow.
The study, presented to Sapienza University in Rome last week, shows large swaths of the vivid "Pompeiian red" frescoes in the town were only turned red by the gases emitted from Vesuvius as it erupted in AD79.
Experts have long suspected that some of the characteristic vivid reds of the frescoes in Pompeii and Herculaneum were originally yellow.
But a new study, conducted by Italy's National Institute of Optics, suggests the sheer extent of the colour change.
Sergio Omarini, who presented the institute's findings, said: "At the moment, there are 246 walls perceived as red, and 57 as yellow. But based on the new research, the numbers must have been, respectively, 165 and 138.
"The discovery allows us to rethink the original appearance of the city in radically different way from how we are used to – in which red, indeed 'Pompeiian red', has been prevalent."
Early archaeologists who began excavating Pompeii in the 18th century were struck by the art decorating entire rooms in the richest of the Roman homes. The signature bright red used in much Roman painting was so vivid among the ruins of Pompeii that the particular shade was named after the city.
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, professor of classics at Cambridge University, and author of Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum, told the Guardian: "One of the ironies of this is that red was constantly forged in antiquity. Red was an extremely expensive and valued colour.
"The proper, bright red was based on minium [red lead] imported from Armenia. What we often think of 'Pompeiian red', though, was a poor man's version, made by giving yellow walls a red wash."
Source
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
No comments:
Write σχόλια