Roman Painting

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Roman Painting

• Comparative Civilizations 12
• K.J. Benoy

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Roman Painting Relationship to Mosaics

• Similar techniques marked mosaic work and
  painting in the Roman period.

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Roman Painting Relationship to Mosaics

• Though the Romans did not develop the ability to
  display three dimensions on two dimensional
  surfaces to the same level of competence as
  Renaissance artists, they came close.
• Only the mathematical precision was lacking.

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Roman Painting Fresco Technique

• Much Roman painting decorated walls.
• The technique used was true Fresco.
• This involved applying lime over a layer of
  plaster, mixed with sand over an upper layer of
  mixed marble and alabaster dust.
• True fresco involves applying paint to wet
  plaster.
• The painter must estimate the amount of plaster
  to be applied in a day.
• Unpainted plaster must be chipped away as it is
  of no use.

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Roman Painting Paint.

• The most frequently employed pigments were earth
  tones.
• Less commonly used was cinnabar, which is the
  brilliant red found at the Villa of the Mysteries
  at Pompeii.

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Roman Painting Fresco Techniques

• The problem for the painter is that the colour
  applied may not be the colour that results.
• Cinnabar occasionally turned black with time. It
  is also a very expensive paint.
• Applied white always turned black.
• Gold leaf is occasionally used.

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Roman Painting - Pompeii

• Much of our knowledge of Roman domestic painting
  comes from the bad luck of Romans in the area of
  Mt. Vesuvius.
• Volcanic ash covered many Roman villas at
  Pompeii, Herculaneum and Boscorealle.
• Much of our knowledge comes from excavations of
  these sites.

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Roman Villas Painted Decoration
Artists reconstruction of a villas painted
decoration by art historian Bettina Bergmann.
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Roman Painting Four StylesThe First Style

• The First Style
• This sometimes is referred to as the masonry
  style.
• This involved geometrical patterns, especially
  blockwork.
• Walls are often painted to imitate marble.

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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Second Style

• The Second Style involved
• Theatrical settings, like painted cityscapes.
• The illusion of space is created.

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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Second Style

• The Second Style
• This often involved inter-connected scenes that
  show a story such as that of the walls in
  Pompeiis Villa of the Mysteries.

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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Second Style
Wall from Pompeiis Villa of the Mysteries
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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Second Style
Pompeiis Villa of the Mysteries
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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Third Style

• The Third Style involved
• Movement away from architectural illusion and a
  turning to surface effects.
• Pretty natural settings were often favoured.

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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Third Style

• The third style is often highly ornate.
• The decoration serves to frame smaller individual
  works of art.

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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Fourth Style

• The fourth style involved
• Ecclectic designs including a revival of the
  second style.
• Painted narrative scenes.

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Roman Painting Four StylesThe Fourth Style

• This style is often marked by highly ornate
  images that reveal the artists close observation
  of how light plays on objects

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Roman Painting

• The naturalism and realism of Roman painting of
  the Republic and Imperial periods was quite
  remarkable and unsurpassed for over a thousand
  years, until the Renaissance.

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Roman Painting Portraiture

• Unlike the Greeks, the Romans were keen to
  preserve accurate images of the dead.
• This probably originated in the Roman veneration
  of ancestors.
• Accurate images were made in death masks, busts
  and paintings.
• Romans had no desire to annoy the dead.

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Roman Painting - Portraiture

• One of the richest sources of Roman portraiture
  is Fayum, in Egypt.
• Images of the dead lay in sarcophaguses during
  the Roman period, as before. What is new is the
  amazing realism of the encaustic painted images
  that have been recovered here.

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Roman Painting PortraitureThe Fayum Mummy
Images
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Roman Painting Christian Influence

• As in sculpture, Roman mosaics and paintings
  turned increasingly away from realism and toward
  symbolism.
• Figures are made more spiritual by separating
  them from a realistic background. They seem to
  float in space

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Roman Painting Christian Influence

• This symbolic style, which began to be used in
  the catacombs of Rome and other Christian centers
  became the dominant art form of both the
  Byzantine Empire and the Germanic Christian West.