Some experiments and observations on the colours used in painting by the ancients

Abstract Beside the use which may be made of what remains of ancient paintings as models for imitation, the author has endeavoured to reap the further advantage of making us acquainted with the nature and chemical composition of their colours; for though the works of Dioscorides, Vitruvius, and Pliny contain descriptions of many substances used by the ancients as pigments, it is only by experiment that the subjects of which they speak can be identified. The author’s experiments have been made upon colours found in the baths of Titus, in the ruins called the baths of Livia, and other ruins of ancient Rome, and in the ruins of Pompeii. Some of these colours had been discovered in vases beneath the ruins of the palace of Titus, and were found to be the same as those used in various fresco paintings of the palace. In one large vase, discovered about two years since, there were found, among other colours, three different kinds of red, one approaching to orange, another dull red, and a third purplish red. The first was minium, the second and third proved to be both ochres of different tints. Another red found in various fresco paintings differed from those found in the vase, and proved to be vermilion. This substance, called by the Greeks klvváβapi was known by the name of minium to the Romans, who called our modern minium by the name of cerussa usta, in consequence of the mode of making it ; which, on the authority of Pliny, is said to have been suggested by the accidental effects of a fire at the Piræeus at Athens, by which ceruse was found converted into minium.