Linie, Form und Farbe

Based on written sources that suggest the existence of once-famous collections of paintings from antiquity, "classical" archaeology has been attempting for two centuries to infer the appearance of lost masterpieces from the surviving descriptions and pictorial references. This book aims to give a broader audience of interested readers an idea of the methods researchers have employed in this endeavor. Following an introduction to the technical requirements of drawing and color selection, the book examines the fundamental aspects of the stylistic history of Greek coloration and issues of color semantics. A separate chapter is devoted to the attempt to reconstruct the paintings mentioned by Pausanias on the cult image of Zeus at Olympia; other conventional pictorial forms are supplemented by the pebble mosaics that emerged in the 4th century B.C. These lead into the mythological scenes abundantly represented in Roman wall paintings and their value as evidence for the lost Greek models, but also as evidence for their own spatial composition, to which a separate chapter is devoted. Finally, in a retrospective examination, brief insights into the Middle Ages and the modern era were necessary to put the historical significance of the ancient works into perspective.