Download Roman Painting

Roman Painting
Roman Painting – Relationship to Mosaics
 Similar
techniques
marked mosaic
work and
painting in the
Roman period.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Roman Villas – Painted Decoration
Artist’s reconstruction of a villa’s painted decoration by art
historian Bettina Bergmann.
Roman Painting – Four Styles
 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.

Roman Painting – Four Styles
 The Second Style
involved:
Theatrical settings,
like painted
cityscapes.
 The illusion of space is
created.

Roman Painting – Four Styles
 The Second Style
 This often involved
inter-connected
scenes that show a
story – such as that of
the walls in Pompeii’s
Villa of the Mysteries.
Roman Painting – Four Styles
Wall from Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries
Roman Painting – Four Styles
Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries
Roman Painting – Four Styles
 The Third Style
involved:
Movement away from
architectural illusion
and a turning to
surface effects.
 Pretty natural settings
were often favoured.

Roman Painting – Four Styles
The Third Style
 The third style is
often highly ornate.
 The decoration
serves to frame
smaller individual
works of art.
Roman Painting – Four Styles
 The fourth style
involved:
Ecclectic designs
including a revival of
the second style.
 Painted narrative
scenes.

Roman Painting – Four Styles
The Fourth Style
 This style is often
marked by highly
ornate images that
reveal the artist’s
close observation of
how light plays on
objects
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.
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.

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.
Roman Painting – Portraiture
The Fayum Mummy Images
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
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.