bob bobato
L'imparfait
Here is a roman frescoe of a bowl of fruit covered in something that looks like plastic wrap. Does anybody have an idea of what it is?
Roman Plastic Wrap?
- Thread starter bob bobato
- Start date
Here is a roman frescoe of a bowl of fruit covered in something that looks like plastic wrap. Does anybody have an idea of what it is?
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
Some sort of veil to keep bugs off the food?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Well it can't be anything plastic, that requires special treatment of petroleum to do that, something the Romans wouldn't have been able to do.
It is probably some sort of veil, though I don't know how to make a clear one.
At first glance, I thought it might have been a spider web.
It is probably some sort of veil, though I don't know how to make a clear one.
At first glance, I thought it might have been a spider web.
Some kind of luminous silk?
Mirc
Not mIRC!!!
That was my first thought too.Cheezy the Wiz said:
I have an idea: maybe it is a veil, a normal one, just like any other veil, but maybe the artist who painted this was not able to paint it like that and painted it like something that for us resembles plastic. To clarify my point: Egyptians used to draw people with their eyes like eyes of certain birds (and this is how they were drawing any man, not those with bird heads). If they didn't know to draw the eyes as they are, it doesn't mean that people there had the eyes somewhere else than in the front of their face.
bob bobato
L'imparfait
Ive googled the picture, and ive found other copies, so I dont think that someone photoshoped it (unless, of course, all the other sites copied the wikipedia pic, or vice versa). And it has a source: this painting was found in Oplontis, near Pompeii. It is a detail of the diaeta room in the Villa di Poppaea. If any body here has been there, youve probably seen it.
mirc said:
I dont think so. Light doesn't reflect off of cloth, even though its reflecting on the 'plastic wrap'.
Maybe its some some sort of glass cover.
Gladi
The ignored thread killer
bob bobato
L'imparfait
I dont think its silk. the cloth on the fruit looks a bit strechted out, and isn't crumpled, even slightly.
GenMarshall
High Elven ISB Capt & Ghost Agent
Looks more like very thin silk to me, since Plastics did not came into the limelight untill the 1940s IIRC.
Xanikk999
History junkie
Not true! Plastic was around in the civil war era actually. Just one form of it called "celluloid".
Then bakelight in the early 20th century way before ww2.
Underseer
King
Do you have a link to the Wikipedia article that contains this image by chance?
bob bobato
L'imparfait
I just looked for it, but some one decided to completely change the article, so I dont know where it is. But I have seen it on other sites. try looking for the villa it was found in, I put it somewhere on this thread.
Stolen Rutters
Deity
I doubt it was plastic in the technical sense (polymer-based substance), but this is making me wonder if cheesecloth had been invented yet. I don't know if anybody uses it anymore, since various plastics available today are so cheap, but I have read about this thin fabric that was used to store cheese and stuff back in the day. That could be an interesting research effort investigating materials that were avilable in the ancient times.
About materials being dull and non-reflective, silk was known and available in the Roman Empire (if not cheap). Enough said on that matter.
And it's a painting. I can imagine using a veil of almost any type of cloth to protect food from insects and such. How would you paint it if you wanted to make clear what food was under the veil? There was such a thing as artistic license in the past, even though this concept is seriously frowned upon in our society nowadays.
About materials being dull and non-reflective, silk was known and available in the Roman Empire (if not cheap). Enough said on that matter.
And it's a painting. I can imagine using a veil of almost any type of cloth to protect food from insects and such. How would you paint it if you wanted to make clear what food was under the veil? There was such a thing as artistic license in the past, even though this concept is seriously frowned upon in our society nowadays.
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