The XVIth International Congress of the International Association for Ancient Wall Painting (International Association for Ancient Wall Painting (AIPMA)) will take place in Sardinia, in Cagliari and Nora. The archaeological area of Nora preserves spectacular monumental evidence, which testifies to the liveliness of what is known as the oldest city in Sardinia. Born as a Phoenician commercial center, Nora was an important center of commercial traffic in the Mediterranean even in the Phoenician phase, and from 227 B.C. onward, it was included in the province of Sardinia et Corsica; in time, The Musei Nazionali di Cagliari, which will host the
conference, is the most important archaeological museum in Sardinia, with over 4,000 artifacts, comprises the history of the entire island, spanning some 7,000 years from Prehistory to the Early Middle Ages. The museum’s collections include objects ranging from Neolithic mother goddesses to Nuragic bronzes, from Phoenician and Punic jewels to Roman statuary and cult objects from the Byzantine period.


The program:

The conference program will be divided into five sessions. The organizers welcome proposals of participation for the following five themes:

1. Painting in context: an interdisciplinary reading
The session welcomes contributions that address socio-economic, cultural, spatial, symbolic, and functional aspects (such as uses and reuses) of paintings in relation to their material and temporal context. Proposals focused on the analysis of decorative fashions, on the semantic values of the elements, on cultural contexts, on the transmission and development of styles and the relationship between painting and its socio-cultural context will be included.


2. Paintings and their architectural contexts

The session welcomes contributions that place paintings in dialogue with the architecturalcontexts of discovery, defining the relationship between the pictorial furnishings and the intended use of the rooms and the building. Furthermore, in this session, the relationship between the pictorial evidence and the architectural, buildings, and structural characteristics of the reference contexts will be considered, enhancing the specificity of each of them.

3. The past and present of ancient Roman painting

The session welcomes contributions that deal with the study of new contexts for research, updates on contexts currently being studied, and the rereading of long familiar paintings.


4. Restoring knowledge

The session welcomes contributions aimed at presenting new techniques both for studying and enhancing pictorial works, according to different methods of representation, recomposition, and reconstruction (e.g., software for the study and assisted virtual
recomposition of paintings, augmented and virtual reality, graphic and 3D reconstructions, inter alia). Furthermore, contributions dedicated to forms of digital archiving of pictorial material will also be considered.


5. Beyond pictorial decoration: investigative technologies, practices, and working techniques

The session welcomes contributions dedicated to the study of aspects of technique and execution as well as the production processes of paintings, investigated both through traditional methods and through new invasive and non-invasive diagnostic technologies (for example, photogrammetric and photometric survey, archaeometry, and imaging etc.).