Pompeii shows its true colours

[Melvadius]

The Guardian is carryiong thisreport on recently announced results of research by the Italy's National Institute of Optics which calls into question the common perception that most of the walls in Pompeii were originally painted red.

 

 

When word spread to Britain of the sensational discovery of the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 18th century, "Pompeiian red" became the favoured colour for smart dining-rooms

[caesar novus]

calls into question the common perception that most of the walls in Pompeii were originally painted red.

I think it's still saying a slight majority were originally red as opposed to the overwhelming majority. Gosh, I think the red is ugly and should have been reserved for an accent. Yellow seems less gaudy and easier to live with.

 

There is a reason in physics that red interiors should be rare. The rods of the eye cannot see red and the cones cannot see any color in low light. Therefore in dim light, red walls will reflect nothing but a murky grey. That is why darkrooms and submarines use dim red lights - it doesn't kill your night (black and white) vision because it is numb to red anyway.

 

I couldn't find an image to display the above clearly, but did find something to reinforce the use of yellow for candlelit conditions. It is from an article on why you see candlelight as yellow although it is predominantly red. Even with cones and rods together, red is weakly perceived. I think this graph shows "yellow" candlelight (and oil lamps?) will be well reflected by yellow walls.

 

 

In a comparable graph for just the rods, you would see the graph shifted left and centered on cyan (omitting red). You can't see color with rods, but I think the way they get wildly excited with turquoise may explain why tropical ocean colors seem blissful. I sometimes force LCD background colors to pale cyan, and it seems to make fonts more readible with less eyestrain - your eyes just go "ahhh".

[Klingan]

I'm working in Pompeii right now and I've talked to some people there who are dealing with paintings. It seems, from what I hear, as if this report was based primarily on evidence from Herculaneum (which was exposed to much higher temperatures during the eruption of 79). So far everything seems good, you can actually see how some walls have changed color there. Pompeii is, however, another matter and most, the overwhelming majority actually, of the red walls there are, and have always been, red. We are, even in Herculaneum, dealing with a relatively small sample (I heard a figure of 50 walls, but I'm not sure where it came from) out of the many hundreds found.

 

Summa summarum; the reports title is rather catchy than correct. Yes, some red walls were yellow, especially in Herculaneum, but most were red.