Abstract
The Lot Sarcophagus is one of the most relevant funerary sculptures of late antiquity (mid-4th century AC). Some of the remarkable aspects are the following (i) it is still preserved in situ; (ii) most of the carved scenes are rarities or unicum; (iii) not all the sculpture work has been completed, which allows us to analyse the executive process; (iv) many traces of polychromy have remained. This paper is focused on the characterization of the residual polychromy by using in-situ non-invasive techniques. Furthermore, few micro samples were taken, to be analysed in laboratory to study the composition of some deposits and to define if a preparatory layer was present under the coloured layer. The data showed that the very rich polychromy of the Lot Sarcophagus was made of Egyptian blue, yellow ochre, and three different types of red: two inorganics (red ochre and cinnabar), and one organic-based (madder lake). Furthermore, some decorations, completely vanished and no longer visible to the naked eye, have been rediscovered, also providing details on the construction phases. During the project, the 3D model of the sarcophagus was acquired, which afterwards was used to map the results of the diagnostic campaign.
Highlights
Many ancient civilizations are known to have made use of polychromy on stone sculptures and architectural elements [1], most of these colours were lost.After a period of mistaken interpretation of sculpted objects as pure white, a long discussion among scholars, about if ancient objects were painted or not, began in 1800 and continued throughout the past century
Gathering as much information as possible about the original polychromy of an archaeological find is extremely important as it offers a new key that gives scholars and the public the sculpture’s original appearance
A correct understanding of the original polychromy is complicated by the fact that the few traces of residual colour are often small due to the vicissitudes the sculptures underwent, such as burial for hundreds or thousands of years, excavation and exposure to the environment, bad storage, and severe cleaning treatments
Summary
Many ancient civilizations are known to have made use of polychromy on stone sculptures and architectural elements [1], most of these colours were lost. During previous years, both non-invasive and micro-invasive techniques and their combinations were applied to characterize remnant materials and pigments on polychrome objects [2,3]. Imaging techniques have become part of the set of analytical methodologies available for the investigation of objects in archaeological contexts [4,5,6,7,8,9]. Among these techniques, ultraviolet-induced luminescence (UVL) and visible-induced luminescence (VIL), both photographic methods, are being progressively adopted by a wider range of users including scientists, conservators, archaeologists, and curators. If micro sampling is required, thanks to the preliminary application of non-invasive techniques, it is possible to perform it in a more rational and limited way
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