Roman era Egyptian mummy portraits baffle experts

9/2/2015 3:41:25 AM

(MENAFN- The Peninsula)Roman-era Egyptian mummy portraits from the site of Tebtunis Egypt are shown in visible light with no blue colour apparent to the naked eye. In an unexpected discovery a research team of scientists and art conservators has found the synthetic pigment Egyptian blue present in all three paintings. (Credit: Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology University of California Berkeley)

EVANSTON Illinois: A research team of scientists and art conservators has found an unusual use of the pigment Egyptian blue in Roman-era Egyptian mummy portraits.

No blue is visible to the naked eye in the paintings but when the researchers used analytical tools for an in-depth study they discovered the ancient artists used the pigment as material for underdrawings and for modulating colour - a finding never before documented.

Experts from Northwestern University in Evanston and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology who unexpectedly discovered this while investigating materials painters used 2000 years ago are baffled because blue has to be manufactured. It typically is reserved for very prominent uses not hidden under other colours.

Northwestern University's Research Associate Professor and an expert on blue colour Marc Walton said "This defies our expectations for how Egyptian blue would be used.

"The discovery changes our understanding of how this particular pigment was used by artists in the second century A.D. I suspect we will start to find unusual uses of this colorant in a lot of different works of art such as wall paintings and sculpture."

The best Roman-era painters tried to emulate Greek painters who were considered the masters of the art form.

Before the Greek period Egyptian blue was used everywhere throughout the Mediterranean - in frescoes on temples to depict the night sky as decoration. When the Greeks came along their palette relied almost exclusively on yellow white black and red.

"When you look at the Tebtunis portraits we studied that's all you see those four colours" Walton said.

"When we started doing our analysis all of a sudden we started to see strange occurrences of this blue pigment which luminesces. We concluded that although the painters were trying hard not to show they were using this colour they were definitely using blue."

Applied Physics A a journal on materials science and processing published this study. The research collaboration is part of the Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS) for which Walton is a senior scientist.

QNA

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