Re-Discovering a Roman Wall Painting at Harvard: New Research on a Fragment from the Villa at Boscotrecase

ABSTRACT

This article presents historical and scientific analysis, as well as the conservation treatment of a newly rediscovered Roman wall painting fragment, now in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums. Although the piece has not previously been published, it was among a group of fragments removed from a Roman villa near Boscotrecase in southern Italy, an area that has been key to the study of Roman wall painting and other decoration. Technical imaging confirms the use of painting techniques consistent with other high-quality paintings in the area. Materials analysis revealed a palette consistent with published findings of Roman wall paintings, including abundant use of Egyptian blue and green earth. Of interest was the use of Egyptian blue as an optical brightener in select white passages. Despite the high quality of the painting, no cinnabar was present, and all red passages were achieved using hematite. Multiple different white minerals were identified including calcite, aragonite, and gypsum. The widespread presence of gypsum is unusual and may point to alteration.

KEYWORDS:

• Roman
• wall painting
• Boscotrecase
• analysis
• Egyptian blue
• green earth
• VIL
• RTI

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express appreciation to Joan Mertens and the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Valeria Sampaolo and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Leslie Rainer of the Getty Museum, the New York Historical Society, Megan Schwenke and the Archives of the Harvard Art Museums, Bettina Bergmann, and Regina Gee of the Oplontis Project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a complete inventory of the fragments see Della Corte 1922, 468–476 and their modern locations von Blanckenhagen and Alexander 1990, 2.

2 The effort to associate the villa with an imperial owner has dominated scholarship. The primary evidence for ownership are graffiti on a ceiling tile, two amphorae, and a peristyle column, see Rostovtzeff 1926; 469 and von Blanckenhagen and Alexander 1990, 2, fn 6 and 7. Some scholars have gone so far as to identify painted medallions in the Black Room as portraits of members of the imperial family, see especially Anderson 1987a; 54 and Anderson 1987b, 127–129 and fn. 2 for earlier discussions of this notion. See Leach’s critique of Anderson (Ling 1988/1989, 104-107).

3 Throughout the paper, the room numbers used refer to Della Corte’s plan, Figure 2.

4 In scholarship and popular media, Gallatin is frequently confused with his cousin, Albert E. Gallatin, a fellow New Yorker and collector of modern art whose Gallery of Living Art was the first public collection of modern art in the United States, on Albert E. Gallatin, see Stavitsky 1994, 1, 4-47.

5 Further evidence for this situation is a gift of 44 fragments from Italian dealer and archaeologist Fausto Benedetti, gifted to the Fogg in 1925 after Forbes expressed interest in teaching his students about Roman wall painting, see Harvard Art Museums inv. 1925.6.1-44.

6 These include Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York inv. 20.192.12, 20.192.13, 20.192.14, 20.192.16, 20.192.17 and Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli inv. 138997.