Colours in the dark: new researches into catacombs

There are several reasons for examining sarcophagi from the Roman catacombs. First of all the micro-climatic conditions of the catacombs - especially the least visited ones - are particularly suitable for the preservation of colours: the temperature and humidity are constant and the lighting is limited to the duration of either visits or inspections. These conditions facilitate the preservation of some of the examples of polychromy on the sarcophagi. Thus detailed investigations of these works can reveal important details of the technique used by the old painters. Secondly, we focused on these types of objects for methodological reasons. Roman sarcophagi belonging to the second-forth centuries AD are sufficiently abundant, chronologically well-defined and the result of a standardized serial production from the workshops of central Italy and Rome in particular. Although scholarly knowledge is good - there are almost complete corpora and detailed museum catalogues - few examples have been subjected to systematic analyses and several unanswered questions remain. Thanks to the study of a class of materials, rather than individual works, we will rely on systematic comparisons to integrate the various observations and data collected and, consequently, to avoid overly hypothetical generalizations. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the technical approaches and traditions of the workshops and of their evolution over the centuries through a wide set of data.