Colours of Pompeii

The Roman world was a mass of colour - most clearly preserved in Pompeii.

In wealthy houses, mosaics, frescoes and marble panelling formed a multi-coloured backdrop to painted sculpture, terracotta objects and furniture - as well, of course, did textiles and soft furnishings.

Public temples and other monuments featured vibrant decorations, while the streets blazed with painted signs and adverts for shops, bars, and politicians.

Chemical analyses of surviving pigments together with period literary sources grant us insight into the types of materials used by painters, as well as clues about the significance of particular colors as signifiers of status.

Some colors of the basic palette (black, white, blue, yellow, red, and green) could be made from readily available materials and were provided by the artists, while other, more costly pigments needed to be supplied by the patron above the price of the commission.

Reds and yellows were popular color choices.

Ocher, an earth pigment derived from clay, was used to make yellow and red pigments (yellow ocher turns red when mixed and heated with hematite, an iron oxide).

Reds could be derived from more opulent sources too, and the naturalist writer Pliny the Elder reports that cinnabar (mercury sulphide), a costly alternative to red ocher, was so desirable that a maximum price was established by law.

In fact, cinnabar was twice the cost of Egyptian blue, and Egyptian blue-made with copper ore imported from Cyprus heated with lime and an alkali - was four times as expensive as yellow ocher.

Pigments derived from the plant and animal kingdom could also range in price.

Pink was produced from the root of the Rubia tinctorum plant, but purple was far more expensive since the murex necessary for its production in antiquity could be produced only from a specific kind of carnivorous sea snail.

Black, commonly made from soot, was a popular background color for many of the grand rooms of Pompeii, yet Pliny also mentions expensive black pigments, including one imported from India. | Source: © Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University

The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei.

Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in the year AD 79.

The eruption buried Pompeii under 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) of ash and pumice, and it was lost for nearly 1700 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1749.

Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire.

Today, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy, with approximately 2,500,000 visitors every year.