Description:
Fragment of wall painting

Label Text:
Installed in Art Before 700 CE, Spring 2025 Label Text:

A World of Color

Looking around this gallery, we see many objects in shades of brown, terracotta, gray, and other neutral tones. It can be easy to forget that the cultures represented in this gallery were bursting with color. Clothing, home furnishings, walls, and even sculpture were often vibrantly colored. Above, three fragments show us how natural pigments were applied to different surfaces.

On a piece of a wall fresco from the Roman Empire, an ochre-colored theatrical mask grins at us from a background of red and black. Below that, a ceramic shard from the Indus Valley Civilization displays a similar palette applied in concentric circles, hinting at a vibrantly-decorated original vessel. Next to it, an Egyptian funerary fragment’s colors are so bright against a canary-yellow background, it seems it could have been painted yesterday.

[Displayed with 2005.19.7 and 2021.5.S207]

Tags:
ancient; archaeology

Subjects:
archaeological objects; Civilization, Ancient

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1910.5.C.E

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.

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