Painting Death with the Colors of Life

This dissertation examines the cultural, political, and artistic role of polychrome wall painting from funerary contexts in South Italy during the critical period that spans the crisis of Greek hegemony and the consolidation of Roman power. Numerous painted tombs were built between the late fifth and the early second centuries BCE for local as well as Greek elite groups across Southern Italy. I investigate the ways in which the wall paintings, with their colors, iconographies, and technical features were both the expression of indigenous cultures and local artistic trends, and a part of a wider and more complex phenomenon, that is the diffusion of funerary wall painting in the Mediterranean during the late Classical and Hellenistic period. Why did polychromy become a crucial component in articulating funerary space in South Italy towards the end of the fifth century BCE, and how did this experience develop in the regions of Campania, Lucania, and Apulia, respectively?