Montreal – Titled “Color: the fourth dimension of sculpture”, the lecture by Paolo Liverani, professor of ancient topography at the University of Florence, will focus on research into polychromy in ancient sculpture and will take place alongside the exhibition “La Collection Torlonia. Chefs-d’œuvre de la sculpture romaine” on April 8 at 6:00 pm at the Maxwell-Cummings Auditorium in Montreal. Although reconstructions remain partly hypothetical, they help provide a clearer understanding of the role and function of art in ancient societies. The study of color is interdisciplinary: it combines the analysis of pigment traces on sculptures (carried out by archaeologists and conservation chemists), the reinterpretation of literary sources through philology and linguistics, and contributions from cognitive sciences to understand the evolution of color terminology in ancient languages. Technical treatises from Late Antiquity and semiotic analysis also help interpret the social codes associated with colors. The conference, organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Montreal, will present examples of works from Archaic Greece to the early Byzantine period. (9colonne)