Polychromy: the meaning of Colour in Roman African statues

ended

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.