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，并概述了古代和现代颜色概念之间的差异和相似之处。色彩的研究在最近的人类学、语言学、艺术史和考古学中已经成为一个熟悉的领域。然而，古典主义者传统上将颜色的研究置于形式的研究之下（特别是在艺术和建筑领域，但也在文学和自然哲学领域）。通过将当代哲学家、诗歌家、史诗作家、历史学家和讽刺作家提出的证据和想法汇集在一起，这项研究恢复了颜色作为罗马世界分类和评价的一个重要信息单位。它还表明，什么是颜色，它是如何起作用的，以及它如何被滥用和误导感官的问题，在罗马知识分子的议程上占据了很高的位置。自世纪上半叶以来，古典语言学家和考古学家对颜色和一般意义的研究一直不太关注。然而，在过去的几年里，已经看到，第一次，在英国和欧洲大陆的古代感知合作跨学科项目的发展。我对早期罗马帝国色彩概念的研究，是针对古典感知研究中的一个知识黑洞，弥合了古典希腊和E.詹姆斯对拜占庭艺术中光线和色彩的全面研究。我的专著打开了一扇窗户，可以看到早期帝国对色彩和感知的使用和辩论，但它也是对古代其他感知研究的批判性回应，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线和亮度而不是色调。我的著作将罗马人对颜色的使用和讨论主要关注视觉感知的范畴与所感知对象的内在本质之间的关系作为其中心论点;因此，似乎抽象的颜色的使用，或邀请抽象范畴的现象（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“色彩在古代大理石雕塑上的重要性”的相关文章将最近在慕尼黑和罗马开创的关于古代大理石雕塑上颜料的鉴定和重建的重要艺术史研究带入了英国古典学术，摘要运用古罗马色彩概念专著中的一些观点，论述了色彩和色彩类型学对理解和评价古代大理石艺术品的重要性。本文，为了解决更广泛的艺术史读者的杂志，还将研究证据，彩绘雕塑在拜占庭和中世纪时期，并（在适当的情况下）考虑的重要性，油漆雕塑在非西方文化。

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.