Research Spotlight: Sarah Lepinski and Roman Wall Paintings
Conservators T. Kakouros and T. Notis working to join fragments
Corinth Excavations is pleased to announce the successful completion of another PhD (see the recent web article by Amelia Brown) on Corinthian material.  Congratulations are due to Dr. Sarah Lepinski for her dissertation which was conferred by the department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College and entitled “Roman Wall Painting from Panayia Field, Corinth, Greece: A Contextual Study.”  Sarah wrote the following of her time at the ASCSA and Corinth Excavations. The primary research for my dissertation took place in Greece, under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies, and was supported by fellowships and grants from Bryn Mawr College, The Fulbright Program, the American School of Classical Studies (as a Thompson Fellow), and the 1984 Foundation (for chemical analyses of the paintings). I studied a large group of wall paintings, which were recovered in the recent excavations by the ASCSA in the Panayia Field in Ancient Corinth. These paintings originally decorated two distinct architectural phases, which date to the first and the third centuries after Christ, respectively, and depict large-scale figural subjects in a wide range of decorative schemes. The addition of these securely dated paintings to the already extensive corpus of Roman Corinthian painting offered a unique opportunity to explore how painting practices change over time in Roman Corinth. This material is the focus of my dissertation. My dissertation offers a methodological process for the study of fragmentary paintings from archaeological (i.e. tertiary) deposits and stresses the significance of technical and material analyses as well as contextual (archaeological, architectural, cultural, historical) study of paintings. Such work facilitated comparative research, which revealed diachronic trends within the paintings from Panayia Field. The first-century paintings demonstrate a wholesale adoption of Italian painting practices. The third-century paintings, however, display both unique figural representations and sustained stylistic affinities with earlier western paintings. Also, specific material and technical traits in the third-century paintings from Panayia Field demonstrate a distinct departure from Italic painting techniques, likely indicating the development of local painting traditions. These trends are further supported by paintings from other structures at Corinth. Sarah Lepinski working on a fresco panel In Corinth my time was spent in the museum and storerooms studying the paintings and associated artifacts, and in the library in Hill house. This time was remarkably expansive, in large part because of people at Corinth — Guy Sanders, Nancy Bookidis, Ioulia Tzonou-Herbst, and James Herbst — and the collaborative atmosphere that they foster. During the Corinth excavation seasons, I worked in the field and served as the Assistant Field Director. In addition to work in Corinth, travel on the school trips and later independently in Greece, Italy, and Turkey facilitated the comparative research for my dissertation. The relationships that I formed with members of the American School, other foreign schools and the Greek archaeological community were fundamental to my research. With introductions by my advisor, Stella Miller-Collett, I partnered with a team of Greek colleagues, led by Drs. Hariklia Brekoulaki and Vassilis Perdikatsis, in the sampling and analysis of the pigments used in the paintings from Panayia Field and those from specific contexts in the area east of the Theater. This work was accomplished in Athens, at the Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies and at the Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploration, at the University of Hania, in Crete, in Northern Greece at the Ormilia Laboratory, and in Italy, at the University of Pisa. The publication of these analyses, which is forthcoming, provides the first extensive study of pigments from Roman Greece. As for future work, in addition to searching for a teaching position, I now begin preparing the final publication of the paintings from Panayia Field and planning the expansion of my research on painting in the Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean. I will be continuing research at Corinth and field work in south eastern Cyprus with the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project.