05-14-2007, 08:14 AM
Certainly ultra violet light has a curious effect on paintings once excavated - sometimes the paint rapidly fades, sometimes just some colours,sometimes the colours change ( blue to green and vice versa is common), --I have personal experience having observed Pompeii over 30 years, and experimented with reproduction frescoes,as well as a corpusof work on the subject, but that is not the case with any of the examples quoted ( so far as I know).
Since we apparently accept painted helmets, why not painted corselets?
Re-enactors seem to have no trouble colouring theirs, and there seems to be a lot more re-enactors with leather spolades, or composite corselets, than multi-layered linen ones. As I said earlier, colours in art can't be conclusive.You might as well argue the brown/pink/beige ones are linen painted to look like leather !
As to the practicalities of colouring leather, we have an example of a black leather cuirass being dyed white ( not painted) right here on RAT!
If white or off-white is "surely" linen, then does that mean that buff or pinkish is "surely" leather ?
I don't think you can read too much into the colours in art, but they do add another factor to the overall picture ?
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff
Since we apparently accept painted helmets, why not painted corselets?
Re-enactors seem to have no trouble colouring theirs, and there seems to be a lot more re-enactors with leather spolades, or composite corselets, than multi-layered linen ones. As I said earlier, colours in art can't be conclusive.You might as well argue the brown/pink/beige ones are linen painted to look like leather !
As to the practicalities of colouring leather, we have an example of a black leather cuirass being dyed white ( not painted) right here on RAT!
If white or off-white is "surely" linen, then does that mean that buff or pinkish is "surely" leather ?
I don't think you can read too much into the colours in art, but they do add another factor to the overall picture ?
regards, Paullus Scipio/Paul McDonnell-Staff
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff