La pittura funeraria tardoellenistica di Lilibeo: tecniche, materiali, motivi

Abstract

During late Hellenistic period, in the Punic town of Lilybaeum a local production of painted naiskoi (“Salinas” group) with banquet scenes and other painted funerary stelae flourished. The paper focuses on three specimens, with the aim of understanding more in depth their technical features and color palette, and of assessing whether groupings established on a typological and iconographical basis corresponded to differences under the technical point of view. Through an archaeometric study, it was possible to identify the constituent materials of the preparation layers, both mineral and organic pigments, as well as the execution techniques. The results seem to confirm the distinction between the proper funerary stelae, intended as grave markers, and the “Salinas aediculae”, which were instead intended to glorify heroized dead. An interesting outcome of the analysis is the similarity detected between a gabled stele, decorated with a painted festoon and some simple vegetal and linear motives, on the one hand, and a fragmentary Second style wall painting from a house that was partly discovered near the modern via Garraffa at Marsala, on the other. This suggests that a local painter, experienced in funerary products, was hired for realizing a different genre of paintings, and might explain the peculiarity of the wall decorations of that house, which translate Italic, high-level models with some misunderstanding.