Abstract
The Tomb of the Diver has been subject for many decades of fierce debate among archaeologists and classicists. Since its discovery in 1968, some scholars have considered it a unique example of the lost tradition of Greek painting, others have emphasized Etruscan or Italic parallels. More recently, a possible local production has been suggested. With the aim of trying to solve the archaeological question, an archaeometric comparison among this well-known artwork and several frescoed tombs coming from Hellenistic and Lucan necropolis was carried out. The multi-analytical study was focused on the identification of peculiar features of executive techniques and raw materials since the first period of the archaeological site. The analytical investigation has been preliminary based on a non-destructive approach, performed in-situ by portable equipment including imaging diagnostics and compositional spectroscopic techniques for identifying pigments and the conservation state of original painted surface; subsequently, a further deepening by using destructive techniques was performed in-lab for the mortar-based supports characterization. Archaeometric study suggested that technological choices slightly changed in a time span of about two centuries, highlighting important markers that allow clustering the contemporary artistic productions. Moreover, a comparison with mortars from temples decorations was provided to better understand the whole artistic context. The archaeometric data showed that the Tomb of the Diver could be traced back to a local artisanal tradition and therefore is neither Etruscan nor Greek, but the first and foremost an expression of the local elite culture of Paestum.
Highlights
The Tomb of the Diver is an exceptional painted tomb from the Greek colony of Paestum in southern Italy (Fig 1)
The present paper presents new archaeometric analysis that shed light on the question of how the Tomb of the Diver relates to other frescoed tombs and great Doric temples from Paestum, starting from the identification of peculiar characteristics of executive techniques and raw materials used in the artworks belonging to the different chronological phases at the Paestum site
The occurrence of such product was further confirmed by SERS analyses on polishing film substrates taken on the Diver and Palmettes tombs (Fig 4), in which Raman signatures at ca. 1730, 1615, 1296, 1117, 1091, 995, 860 and 630 cm-1 were observed [17]
Summary
The Tomb of the Diver is an exceptional painted tomb from the Greek colony of Paestum in southern Italy (Fig 1). It dates to around 500–475 BC and is currently the only tomb with figurative scenes known from a Greek city dating to before the fourth century BC. Even if there are no figurative scenes, the decoration scheme of most of them recalls that of the Tomb of the Diver, with a red baseboard and a white panel above it. More than a hundred painted tombs are known from the fourth century BC. In this period, figurative paintings become very common
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