Light and colors in the “Villa dei Misteri”

Authors

  • Laura Bellia Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”
  • Massimo Osanna Archaeological Superintendency of Pompei
  • Gennaro Spada Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”
  • Annamaria Mauro Archaeological Superintendency of Pompei
  • Chiara Donzella
  • Francesca Fragliasso Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”
  • Emanuela Stefanizzi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23738/ccsj.i102018.04

Keywords:

Villa of the Mysteries, Roman wall-paintings colors, Archaeological heritage lighting, Daylight

Abstract

When dealing with cultural heritage, lighting design becomes really thorny, due to the necessity to keep the balance between artworks valorization and conservation requirements. Lighting characteristics have a significant impact on artworks fruition and obviously on the related chromatic perception. An aware design necessarily needs preliminary scrupulous analyses of the pieces of art to light, aiming at defining its chromatic characteristics and at understanding the way it interacts with light. Given these premises, the paper shows a methodology used to characterize artworks colors, based on on-field measurements. The method was applied to a very interesting case-study: the ancient roman wall-paintings located in the triclinium of the villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. The study was divided in two parts: the analysis of the current lighting conditions and the chromatic analysis of wall-paintings colors. The former part reports results of illuminance, irradiance and luminance measurements, describing daylighting conditions inside the villa. The latter focuses on chromatic properties of the wall-paintings pigments. Predominant colors were identified and for each one of them an analysis area was chosen. Spectral reflectance measurements were performed for different points belonging to each chromatic area and the related CIELAB color space chromatic coordinates were calculated and compared.

Author Biographies

  • Laura Bellia, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”

    Laura Bellia: M.Sc., Ph.D, Full Professor of Lighting and Building Physics at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. Her research’s topics and interests include lighting, daylighting, smart lighting systems and automatic controls, lighting quality, visual comfort, glare, non-visual effects of lighting as circadian effects, LED sources, color quality of light.

  • Massimo Osanna , Archaeological Superintendency of Pompei

    Massimo Osanna: M.Sc., Ph.D, Superintendent for the Archaeological Heritage of Naples and Pompeii. Full Professor of Classical Archaeology at Dipartimento di Studi umanistici, University of Naples “Federico II”.

  • Gennaro Spada , Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”

    Gennaro Spada: M.Sc., Ph.D., Technical Officer at the Photometry and Lighting Laboratory of the Industrial Engineering Department, University of Naples Federico II, Italy. His research’s topics and interests include lighting, lighting quality, visual comfort, glare, LED sources, light measurements, color quality of light.

  • Annamaria Mauro , Archaeological Superintendency of Pompei

    Annamaria Mauro: Architect, head of the technical office and manager of the functional area of the organization of the Parco Archeologico di Pompei. General coordinator of the Special Office for administrative, technical and construction activities, and related aspects of archaeological security for the use of ancient buildings. Project Manager of the defense of the Territory of the Parco Archeologico di Pompei.

  • Chiara Donzella

    Chiara Donzella: Architect. She collaborated with the Industrial Engineering Department of the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, for some researches about lighting for artworks.

  • Francesca Fragliasso , Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”

    Francesca Fragliasso: M.Sc., Ph.D. student at the Industrial Engineering Department, University of Naples Federico II, Italy. She deals with research in lighting design, specifically focusing on themes related to luminous environment quality, energy efficiency and integration of daylight and electric light to optimize energy savings and improve users’ comfort.

  • Emanuela Stefanizzi

    Emanuela Stefanizzi: Architect. She collaborated with the Industrial Engineering Department of the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, for some researches about human perception of colors and lighting for artworks.

References

Bellia, L., Cesarano, A., Minichiello, F., & Sibilio, S. (2002). Setting up a CCD photometer for lighting research and de- sign. Building and Environment, 37(11), 1099-1106.

Bellia, L., Cesarano, A., Minichiello, F., Sibilio, S., & Spada, G. (2003, May). Calibration procedures of a CCD camera for photometric measurements. In IEEE INSTRUMENTA- TION AND MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS (Vol. 1, pp. 89-93). IEEE.

Brendel, O.J. (1966) Der Grosse Fries in der Villa dei Mis- teri, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archeologischen Instituts, 81, 1966.

Burkert, W. (1989) Antichi culti misterici, Bari

Chen H. S., Chou C. J., Luo H. W., and Luo M. R. (2016) “Mu- seum lighting environment: Designing a perception zone map and emotional response models,” Lighting Research & Technology, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 589-607.

CIE - Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (2004) Con- trol of damage to museum objects by optical radiation

Csuti P., Fáy A., Schanda J., Szabó F. and Tátrai V. (2015) “Color fidelity for picture gallery illumination, Part 2: Test sample selection–museum tests,” Lighting Research & Technology, vol. 47, no. 5, pp. 522-532.

Maiuri, A. (1931) La villa dei Misteri, Roma

Nascimento S. M. C. and Masuda O., (2014) “Best lighting for visual appreciation of artistic paintings—experiments with real paintings and real illumination,” JOSA A, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. A214-A219.

Pridmore, R. W. (2017) “Preferred illumination for paintings: Cool–warm balanced color temperature predicted from radiometry and colorimetry,” Lighting Research & Technology, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 618-631.

Pugliese Carratelli G. (1990) Il santuario dionisiaco di Pompei, Tra Cadmo e Orfeo, Bologna

Schanda J., Csuti P. and Szabó F. (2015), “Color fidelity for picture gallery illumination, Part 1: Determining the optimum light-emitting diode spectrum” Lighting Research & Technology, vol. 47, no. 5, pp. 513-521, 2015. Torelli, M. (1984) Lavinio e Roma, riti iniziatici e matrimonio tra archeologia e storia, Roma

Yoshizawa N., Fujiwara T., and Miyashita T., (2012) “A Study on the Appearance of Paintings in the Museum Under Violet and Blue LED,” CIE Publication x038, Vienna: CIE2012, pp. 374-381.

Zhai Q. Y., Luo M. R. and Liu X. Y. (2015) “The impact of illuminance and color temperature on viewing fine art paintings under LED lighting” Lighting Research & Technology, vol. 47, no. 7, pp. 795-809, 2015.

Zhai Q. Y., Luo M. R., and Liu X. Y. (2016) “The impact of LED lighting parameters on viewing fine art paintings” Lighting Research & Technology, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 711- 725, 2016.

Downloads

Published

2018-09-21

Issue

Vol. 10 (2018)

Section

Papers

License

The "Cultura e Scienza del Colore - Color Culture and Science" journal is registered at the Court of Milan at n.233 of 24.06.2014.

The journal is an open access journal, free for readers and authors and has joined ROAD, the Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources, since 2014. Articles published in the “Cultura e Scienza del Colore - Color Culture and Science" journal are open access articles, distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The copyright is retained by the author(s).

How to Cite

“Light and colors in the ‘Villa dei Misteri’” (2018) Cultura e Scienza del Colore - Color Culture and Science, 10, pp. 31–41. doi:10.23738/ccsj.i102018.04.