Dr. Cecilie Brøns: Colourful Beauties, Dress and appearance in ancient Palmyra

The lecture: Colourful Beauties: What the polychromy of funerary portraits can reveal about dress and appearance in ancient Palmyra, is part of the Ancient Attraction-series.
This lecture is presented by Dr. Cecilie Brøns, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark.

About the lecture
Colours were an important aspect of ancient art and architecture. However, due to unfavourable conditions of preservation, the fragility of paint, and occasionally to actual cleaning, the original colouration of ancient artworks has usually disappeared, leaving us with the “naked”, white stone artefacts. Yet, careful, scientific examinations can detect their original appearance. So far, research focus has mainly centred on sculpture from the Greco-Roman period, while artefacts from the more outlying areas of the ancient Mediterranean world and the Near East in comparison has been somewhat overlooked.

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen holds one of the world’s largest collections of Palmyrene funerary portraits. In this lecture, I present the recent research carried out on selected artefacts from this collection, which has revealed the original splendour of the men and women rendered in these portraits, including the colours of their garments and jewellery as well as their facial features and hair. When juxtaposing these results with knowledge of the textiles and accessories recovered from archaeological contexts in ancient Palmyra, we can reconstruct the possible original appearance of these portraits. This vividly illustrates how ideal beauty was constructed and perceived in ancient Palmyra.

For more information on this Zoom-seminar please see: https://www.tf.uio.no/english/researc...