A Web-Based System for Data Integration and Visualization of the Ancient Colour

A renewed interest in the study of the ancient colour of Greek and Roman architectures and artworks has emerged in the last decade, originating multidisciplinary studies in the Digital Humanities field. Despite the important results achieved within a few years, the existing projects on the study of the ancient polychromy do not take into account the need to define a standard methodological approach focused on the use of new technologies as instruments to document and connect the different data gathered, improving our knowledge on this subject. For this reason, we present a systematic methodological process defined to identify, document and visualize the preserved (and in some cases the digital reconstructed) original colour and gilding on marble artefacts, starting from the analytical study of Roman marble sarcophagi made in Rome from the first half of the 2nd cent. to the end of the 4th cent. AD. Having the possibility to combine different diagnostics modalities with archaeological data is very interesting for the specialists of polychromy. In order to resolve this problem, we have developed specific components for 3D Heritage Online Presenter (3DHOP) system, where the 3D model is used to manage and display all achieved information about the ancient polychromy and the history of the artefacts.