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Pigment Hierarchies In The Roman World

Pertinax

Entry posted by Pertinax

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I have been delving through this work

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Society-Pompeii-He...8&s=gateway

being a great lover of Pompeii and Herculaneum. As far as the social hierarchy of houses and their internal layouts go I have started a thread here:

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showto...amp;#entry43683

the changing styles of layout and decoration ,are intimate to the social upheavals of the period from the late Republic to approximately the death of Pliny The Elder. Indeed Pliny is a direct commentator on those very styles most acessible to himself in the city of Pompeii.

 

What is further interesting is the hierarchy of colours used by the aspiring Patron or Freedman in his home.The cost of pigments being the socially determining factor. Firstly, the most basic colouration is a limewash white, this is the very least that could be applied to a room-though a grand house might contain basic rooms with such colouration.

Cinnabar Red is the first major step into a luxurious environment, a painting contractor would charge a client directly for use of such a pigment (it is a sulphide of Mercury , HgS and associated with volcanic regions).

http://www.galleries.com/minerals/sulfides...ar/cinnabar.htm

Yellow ochre is another attested pigment , derived from clays and used as a general panel colour for rooms to be used for conspicuous display, as an iron oxide this will not have been rare ( rusty nails would do) but a consistent pure colour would need effort and application

http://webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/over...ellowochre.html

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?act=mo...=si&img=449

 

Then we ascend to blue , from lapis lazuli, very expensive and used only for the most exquisite of decorations: here we have the pigments displayed in the palette of the late , great John Davis of LEG II AVG

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?act=mo...=si&img=907

http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/lapis.html

 

Finally black, was the colour for the grandest of state rooms, this may seem quite a strange circumstance to the modern historian, its weighty profundity is the key to its popularity in Roman sensibilities.This would be "bone black" or a high quality charcoal made from ivory (or possibly other dense bones), hence its inordinate cost.

edit note: no plant or animal will actually yield a true black , so the secret is in the mechanism of preparation with the blackest yielding items.

 

I must also offer one decorative motif that relates to specific servile areas of the house , especially where the house is not of the highest class( where physical separation would be near total) that is the device of zebra striped panels as a stark emblem contrasted with sumptuous decoration elsewhere.

http://www.uwm.edu/Course/mythology/0900/1501.jpg

 

A final item that must be mentioned is this , the division/colouration is not an artifice relating to privacy, indeed as far as I can see privacy is minimal ( I assume previous mention of the lack of Roman body shame is relevant here) however access to the intimate councils of the Paterfamilias is crucial. So all of this artifice is as regards degrees of intimacy of patronage , not zones of privacy within a building .An important clue here is that , if one stands in the entrance hall of many of the Pompeiian houses -you can see right to the very heart of the house with the Paterfamilias framed in his "seat of power" , though you might not be able to physically reach him if your status was too low, more clienti than amici...

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Pertinax

Very interesting! Was purple still a restircted color during the empire?

Augustus seems to have dismantled many "old fashioned" ceremonies and stylistic devices, which makes the period very interesting: purple is outside the scope of the work (as it is built environment only), but I will follow the lead your post suggests to see what happened to the awesomely expensive murex dye. I wonder , did the garments smell fishy?

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DecimusCaesar

Interesting article Pertinax!

 

It's strange considering the popularity of black as pigmentation as I had always thought that the Romans had gone for brighter colours.

 

Would the houses and clothes of the early Imperial era differ from those of the late Republican? I had read that the Romans of the late Republic enjoyed brighter colour pigmentations (eg. the Senators in their brightly coloured togas were different to those of the imperial era with their white ones).

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Kosmo

Purple remained a sign of soveraignity exclusive to the emperors until the fall of Byzantium when it migrated to the ottoman flag.

I don't know if murex dye was the color used but I presume so.

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Pertinax

Interesting article Pertinax!

 

It's strange considering the popularity of black as pigmentation as I had always thought that the Romans had gone for brighter colours.

 

Would the houses and clothes of the early Imperial era differ from those of the late Republican? I had read that the Romans of the late Republic enjoyed brighter colour pigmentations (eg. the Senators in their brightly coloured togas were different to those of the imperial era with their white ones).

 

There is a definite Republic/early Imperial shift in decorative vocabulary , I will write more on this later-so please watch the main thread.

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M. Porcius Cato

There is a definite Republic/early Imperial shift in decorative vocabulary , I will write more on this later-so please watch the main thread.

 

Interesting article, and with baited breath, I'm waiting to hear about the esthetic changes that attended the end of civil wars.

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Pertinax

There is a definite Republic/early Imperial shift in decorative vocabulary , I will write more on this later-so please watch the main thread.

 

Interesting article, and with baited breath, I'm waiting to hear about the esthetic changes that attended the end of civil wars.

 

These changes may not live up to the anticipated "vulgarian excess" that strict Catonians might suspect to follow the demise of the Republic. From the notes I am presently making we see more a change in the division of rooms by "panels" , rather than, say, a ground colour with decorative treatment .What I can allude to though is the tremendous upsurge in interest in displaying pictures and statutary as a sign of status , so much so that Agrippa was keen on "nationalising" images -as he understood the power of display( I was going to say advertising).

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Pertinax

What is murex?

My apologies , I used the latin name of the beastie: Murex is (or rather was in this case) a shellfish , from which the purple dye was "expressed" . There are quite a number of Murex species but it is thought that the best original dye yeilding animal is extinct.

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DecimusCaesar

So there was a surge of intrest in paintigs during the this period, whcih images would have been popular? I think there was more of a increase of paintings of people, especially the occupants later on but would Gladiator displays or various paintings of myths or stories (the Trojan wars for example) have been equally popular in Roman houses?

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Pertinax

So there was a surge of intrest in paintigs during the this period, whcih images would have been popular? I think there was more of a increase of paintings of people, especially the occupants later on but would Gladiator displays or various paintings of myths or stories (the Trojan wars for example) have been equally popular in Roman houses?

 

Images and statues, but particularly those with religious allusions: in relation to the symbolic nature of these images , so Patrons sought to influence their clientii. This certainly doesn't exclude "secular" or mythological notifs , the latter being very popular. Gladiatorial images tend to be more of a "downmarket" thing, ie: badges, cups, glassware and knicknacks hawked at shows (like souvenirs at sporting events nowadays).If you can be patient till I visit Naples in the spring then I will have plenty of images either here or on my msn blog to illustrate this.

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Lost_Warrior
My apologies , I used the latin name of the beastie: Murex is (or rather was in this case) a shellfish , from which the purple dye was "expressed" . There are quite a number of Murex species but it is thought that the best original dye yeilding animal is extinct.

 

I see. To the modern American mind, the term Murex is reminiscent of laundry detergent :)

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Pertinax

I understand your confusion. 12,000 of the little blighters were needed per toga , you can therefore glimpse the expense and work needed to collect , process and extract the dyestuff.

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Lost_Warrior

Lol yea. How big were Murex, and how were they caught? Was it like those tiny feeder fish, could you catch a few thousand in a net all at once? Or did you have to catch them with bait and a hook?

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WotWotius

Lol yea. How big were Murex, and how were they caught? Was it like those tiny feeder fish, could you catch a few thousand in a net all at once? Or did you have to catch them with bait and a hook?

LW incredibly , I found this defunct site with a murex article.

http://www.jolique.com/dyes_colorants/purple_passion.htm

 

 

Yes, very interesting indeed. I do however have a point out a minor point in regards to the article. The article mentions one legend, which credits Helen of Troy as the dye discoverer, who came across it when her dog bit into a sea shell and was coloured purple as a result.

 

Though there is another legend attached to the dye's discovery. According to the 2nd Century sophist, Julius Pollux, is was in fact Heracles' dog which stumbled across the dye.

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