Pompeian red refers to the color of iron oxide-based mineral pigment with a hue close to red ochre, so named because of its common use in ancient Roman painting and the fact that it is abundant in the murals of Pompeii.
Studies have shown that walls with Pompeian red backgrounds were painted in various ways, of which the use of cinnabar was the most expensive.
This term also defines the ochre-red color of a plaster characteristic of Roman ceramics.
Pompeii roman freso
Pompeian Red ware fabric | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
Pompeian red - Color coordinates
HEX #A22E37
sRGB1 (r;g; b) (162; 46; 55)
CMYK2 (c;m;y;k) (0; 72; 66; 36)
HSV (h;s;v) (355°; 72%; 64%)
Beaker decorated with indentations and a human face together with red ware plates and bowls, from I.10.4, House of Menander
History of the concept
The concept of Pompeian red was born with the real rediscovery of the site of Pompeii in the 18th century and its influence on art and taste in Europe.
The Café Procope in Paris, redecorated in the 1980s in a style reminiscent of late eighteenth-century taste, was covered with Pompeian red walls.
In the 19th century, museums often adopted Pompeian red for their walls.
Pompeian Small cups containing the pigments used to decorate the walls
It was widely used in the decoration of residences and palaces built in the 19th century to emulate the great Roman villas, such as the Pompeian House (now gone) built by Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, or the Pompejanum built by Ludwig I of Bavaria in Aschaffenburg.
Pompeian red is not a color defined from a chromatic point of view or according to the pigments used, but an aesthetic and cultural reference.
Pompeian Small cup with dark-red pigments | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
Red pigments in Pompeii
It's important not to confuse the colors obtained with the pigments used to make them.
The Latin vocabulary is imprecise in this area, and Pliny the Elder, who is the main source of colors in ancient painting, confuses the terms that designate one or the other.
The French term rouge pompéien refers to a set of hues obtained, to dark reds varying roughly around red ochre, sometimes tending more or less toward brown ochre or violet, and not to a particular pigment.
Pompeian Small cup with pink pigments | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
The red pigments used in Pompeii to obtain Pompeian red include cinnabar, sinopis, and red ochre (rubrica). Painters also overlaid layers of different pigments.
It could also be yellow ochre, whose color was transformed into red ochre at the time of the eruption due to the effect of heat, a mutation already known to the ancients when exposed to heat above 700 °C.
A team led by Sergio Omarini has shown that an important part of the red walls of Pompeii must have been yellow ochre before the eruption of 799; the impression we have today of a strong predominance of red, which gave rise to the expression Pompeian red, does not, therefore, correspond to the impression that contemporaries had.
Pompeian Small cup with Red-ocher pigments | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
Recent discoveries | National Institute of Optics (INO), Florence
Recent discoveries, have called into question the existence of Pompeian red.
In particular, it is a study conducted by the National Institute of Optics (Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, CNR-INO) that has brought out this background about the real existence of Pompeii’s symbolic color.
The study, in fact, shows that the chromatic hue of Pompeian red actually comes from an alteration of the color caused by the gases and high temperatures given off during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Pompeian Small cup with yellow-ocher pigments | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
According to the INO study, Pompeian red is actually a yellow ochre.
It became red because of the intense heat given off by gases during the eruption of Vesuvius, which changed the pigment of the yellow color to red.
This particular characteristic of yellow ochre becoming red in contact with heat was also known to the ancient Romans.
In fact as described by Pliny and Vitruvius, they often used to heat yellow ochre to make it red. In order to decorate and paint the walls of their homes, to add richness to the rooms.
Pompeian Detail of some of the small cups containing the pigments used to decorate the walls
But not only that, the study conducted by the INO also questioned the actual number of house walls that were painted using true Pompeian red.
According to experts, there are 246 walls currently felt to be red and 57 yellow ones, but according to the results, there must have originally been 165 and 138, respectively.
Pompeian Small cup with purple-Murex pigments | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
The Villa of the Mysteries itself a symbolic and prestigious place in Pompeii, famous worldwide for the extraordinary triclinium decorated on its three large walls with the use of Pompeian red has been questioned.
According to top experts, however, the Villa of the Mysteries would not be counted among those that have suffered chromatic alteration due to heat.
And that almost certainly those walls were red originally as well. It is, according to Wallace, the authentic Pompeian red, of the most expensive kind.
A Glass vase filled with fruit (detail) | Room of room-of Poppaea Villa
Pompeian Small cup with purple-Murex pigments | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
Il 'rosso pompeiano', un vero giallo...
CNR - Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Firenze
Il colore emblema dei siti archeologici campani, in realtà era un ocra.
Una ricerca dell’Ino-Cnr, promossa dalla Soprintendenza di Napoli e Pompei, dimostra che l’intensità cromatica delle antiche città è frutto di un’alterazione, causata dai gas emessi dal Vesuvio durante l’eruzione.
Il famoso ‘rosso pompeiano’? in realtà era un giallo, modificato dai gas dell’eruzione vesuviana. Gran parte del colore che caratterizza le pareti delle ville di Ercolano e di Pompei in origine era un giallo ocra.
A dirlo, una ricerca condotta da Sergio Omarini dell’Istituto nazionale di ottica del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Ino-Cnr) di Firenze.
"Grazie ad alcune indagini abbiamo potuto accertare che il colore simbolo dei siti archeologici campani, in realtà, è frutto dell’azione del gas ad alta temperatura la cui fuoriuscita precedette l’eruzione del Vesuvio avvenuta nel 79 d.C.", spiega Omarini.
"Il fenomeno di questa mutazione cromatica era già noto agli esperti, ma lo studio realizzato dall’Ino-Cnr e promosso dalla Soprintendenza speciale per i beni archeologici di Napoli e Pompei in collaborazione con l’Università ‘Suor Orsola Benincasa’ di Napoli ha finalmente permesso di quantificarne la portata, almeno ad Ercolano".
Red ware fabric | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
L’immaginario delle due antiche città, almeno dal punto di vista cromatico, va insomma ribaltato.
"Le pareti attualmente percepite come rosse sono 246 e le gialle 57, ma stando ai risultati in origine dovevano essere rispettivamente 165 e 138, per una area di sicura trasformazione di oltre 150 metri quadrati di parete", prosegue il ricercatore.
"Questa scoperta permette di reimpostare gli aspetti originari della città in modo completamente diverso da quello conosciuto, dove prevale il rosso appellato appunto ‘pompeiano’".
Il risultato verrà presentato in occasione della VII Conferenza nazionale del colore, che si terrà il 15 e 16 settembre a Roma Presso l’Università ‘La Sapienza’ (Facoltà di ingegneria, via Eudossiana, 18).
"Il rosso anticamente si otteneva con il cinabro, composto di mercurio, e dal minio, composto di piombo, pigmenti più rari e costosi, utilizzati soprattutto nei dipinti, oppure scaldando l’ocra gialla, una terra di facile reperibilità", conclude il ricercatore.
"Quest’ultimo effetto, descritto anticamente da Plinio e Vitruvio, si può percepire anche ad occhio nudo nelle fenditure che solcano le pareti rosse di Ercolano e Pompei".
Le indagini, sono state condotte con strumenti non invasivi: lo spettrofotocolorimetro per misurare il colore e la fluorescenza X che ha consentito di rivelare la presenza di elementi chimici per escludere il minio e cinabro. | Fonte: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Pompeian Small cup with light Egyptian-Blue pigments | National Archaeological Museum of Naples
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