Colour and meaning in Roman society, literature and art

该项目试图了解早期帝国的罗马人如何分类、组织和应用颜色，并概述古代和现代颜色概念之间的差异和相似之处。在最近的人类学、语言学、艺术史和考古学中，对颜色的研究已经成为人们熟悉的领域。然而，古典主义者传统上把对颜色的研究从属于形式（特别是在艺术和建筑中，但也在文学术语和自然哲学中）。通过收集当代哲学家、挽歌家、史诗作家、历史学家和讽刺作家提出的证据和观点，本研究恢复了颜色作为分类和评价罗马世界的重要信息单位的地位。它还表明，颜色是什么，它是如何起作用的，以及它是如何被滥用和误导感官的，这些问题都是罗马人智力议程上的重要问题。自19世纪上半叶以来，古典语言学家和考古学家一直零星地关注色彩和感官的研究。然而，在过去的几年里，我们第一次看到了英国和欧洲大陆在古代感知方面的跨学科合作项目的发展。我对早期罗马帝国色彩概念的研究，目标是古典感知研究中的知识黑洞，弥合了古典希腊几项重要的色彩研究与E. James对拜占庭艺术中光和色彩的综合研究之间的差距。我的专著为早期帝国的色彩和感知的使用和辩论打开了一扇窗，但它也作为对古代感知的其他研究的批判性回应，并提出了一种传统（和有问题的）方法的智力替代方案，这种方法倾向于古代优先考虑光和亮度而不是色调。我的作品的中心论点是，罗马人对颜色的使用和讨论主要关注视觉感知类别与被感知对象的内在本质之间的关系；因此，色彩的使用似乎是抽象的，或者引起抽象范畴的现象（如彩虹）被视为哲学或伦理问题。这一感知的基本原则似乎指导了大多数罗马人对色彩的利用和解释。有关“古代大理石雕塑中颜色的重要性”的相关文章带来了重要的艺术史研究，最近在慕尼黑和罗马开创了对古代大理石雕塑中颜料的识别和重建的英国古典学术研究，并通过应用在古罗马颜色概念专著中探索的一些想法，解决了颜色和颜色类型对理解和评估古代大理石文物的重要性。为了解决该杂志更广泛的艺术史读者，本文还将研究拜占庭和中世纪时期绘画雕塑的证据，并（在适当的情况下）考虑非西方文化中绘画对雕塑的重要性。

This project attempts to understand how Romans of the early empire categorised, organised and applied colours, and outlines the differences and similarities between ancient and modern concepts of colour. The study of colour has become familiar territory in recent anthropology, linguistics, art history and archaeology. Classicists, however, have traditionally subordinated the study of colour to form (particularly in art and architecture, but also in literary ekphrasis and natural philosophy). By drawing together evidence and ideas floated by contemporary philosophers, elegists, epic writers, historians and satirists, this research reinstates colour as an essential informative unit for the classification and evaluation of the Roman world. It also demonstrates that the questions of what colour is and how it functions - as well as how it could be abused and mislead the senses - were high on the Roman intellectual agenda. The study of colour, and the senses in general, has received sporadic attention from classical linguists and archaeologists since the first half of the nineteenth century. The last few years, however, have seen, for the first time, the development of collaborative interdisciplinary projects on perception in antiquity in the UK and on the continent. My work on concepts of colour in early imperial Rome targets something of an intellectual black hole in classical perception studies, bridging the gap between several important studies of colour in Classical Greece, and E. James's comprehensive study of light and colour in Byzantine art. My monograph opens up a window into the use of and debates about colour and perception in the early Empire, but it also operates as a critical response to other studies of perception in antiquity, and proposes an intellectual alternative to the traditional (and problematic) approach that favours the ancient prioritisation of light and luminosity over hue. My work develops as its central argument the line that Roman uses and discussions of colour were principally concerned with the relationship between categories of visual perception and the inherent nature of the perceived object; thus, uses of colour that seemed abstract, or phenomena that invited abstract categories (such as the rainbow), were treated as philosophical or ethical problems. This basic principle of perception appears to have guided most Roman exploitation and interpretation of colour.The connected article on 'The importance of colour on ancient marble sculpture' brings important art historical research recently pioneered in Munich and Rome on the identification and reconstruction of pigments on ancient marble sculpture to English classical scholarship and, by applying some of the ideas explored in the monograph on concepts of colour in ancient Rome, addresses the significance of colour and colour typologies for understanding and evaluating ancient marble artefacts. This article, in order to address the broader art historical audience of the journal, will also examine evidence for painted sculpture in the Byzantine and Medieval periods and (where appropriate) consider the significance of paint on sculpture in non-Western cultures.