Project description
A closer look at the history of colour
In the ancient world, polychromy, the art of painting in several colours, was an inherent part of sculpture and architecture. However, the use of colours in Roman statues is understudied. The EU-funded PolyCRomA project will explore the meaning of Roman imperial statues' polychromy in proconsular Africa through the Bardo National Museum collection in Tunisia. This will be the first systematic study of the use of colour in the statuary of an important imperial province. The project will use multispectral imaging and UV and VIL videomicroscope and in situ analyses to identify the techniques used. It will also review the typology, quality and provenance of the more than 100 coloured statues in the corpus constituting a significant mirror of the African society. The meaning of polychromy will be analysed in relation to the socio-political and religious purpose with which these artefacts were conceived.
Objective
Long neglected, the polychromy of ancient statues has been increasingly studied during the last 20 years with a multidisciplinary cooperation between humanities and natural sciences. If the use of colour seems omnipresent in Greek statues with an illusionistic aim, the phenomenon is not only understudied in Roman statues but also more ambiguous: the fashion for copying Greek statues seems to develop the taste for marble and the socio-political value of the statues could be reflected in the use of colour.
This action explores the meaning of Roman Imperial statues polychromy in Proconsular Africa though the Bardo museum collection in Tunisia, proposing the first systematic study of the use of colour in the statuary of an important Imperial province. The variety of typology, quality and provenance (local, Asia Minor, Rome workshops) of the more than 100 coloured statues in the corpus offers a significant mirror of the African society. Moreover, as the archaeological context of
discovery is well known, the meaning of the polychromy will be analysed in relation with the socio-political and religious purpose with which these artefacts were conceived.
The preserved traces of colour will first be documented by coupling visual investigation (by the support of multispectral imaging and UV and VIL videomicroscope) and in-situ analyses (XRF and µRaman) in order to identify the techniques used to colour the statues. Selected micro-samples will undergo further quantitative analyses (PIXE, SEM/EDX, hyperspectral imaging, FT-IR). Finally literary and epigraphic sources of Proconsular Africa mentioning the colour of statues will be inventoried and the use of colour on the statues will be compared with their counterparts in painting and mosaic.
The overall evaluation of the data will go beyond the scope of the province and will reach wider conclusions on the variations in the use of colour and its meaning, contributing to the history of colour and the modern perception of Roman art.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcolors
- humanitiesartsvisual arts
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- natural sciences
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
4000 Liege
Belgium