Los restos pictóricos de la calle Palas. Un conjunto entre el II y III estilo pompeyano en Cartagena

Abstract

The intervention developed in Palas Street no. 5-7 of Cartagena, showed the existence of a group of three domestic rooms in wich it could be documented a set of Roman wall painting dateable between the end of first century BC and early 1^st century AD, as well as part of a late republican coffered ceiling. Our objective is to show the great pictorial tradition of the city and, for that purpose, in this paper we make an technical-stylistic study and the physical-chemical characterisation through the application of XRD, XRF and Raman spectrocopy of the mortars and pigments of an exceptional group which is one of the few examples documented in Cartagena of this chronology. The results have shown the persistence that late-Republican painting techniques –wall painting and stucco– in a house that continues in use until the Early Imperial period, as well as the existence of several groups that are situated in a period that is less known in the city caused by the least number of examples. This allows us to see the work of italic and local workshops there, in the last case, since the changeover to the 1^st century AD.