300 Sir Humphry Davy’s experiments and observations 
following pages I shall have the honor of offering to the Society 
an investigation of this subject. My experiments have been 
made upon colours found in the baths of Titus, and the ruins 
called the baths of Livia, and in the remains of other palaces 
and baths of ancient Rome, and in the ruins of Pompeii. By 
the kindness of my friend, the celebrated Canova, who is 
charged with the care of the works connected with ancient art 
in Rome, I have been enabled to select, with my own hands, 
specimens of the different pigments that have been found in 
vases discovered in the excavations, lately made beneath the 
ruins of the palace of Titus, and to compare them with the 
colours fixed on the walls or detached in fragments of stucco : 
and Signor Nelli, the proprietor of the Nozze Aldobrandine, 
with great liberality permitted me to make such experiments 
upon the colours of this celebrated picture, as were necessary 
to determine their nature. When the preservation of a work; 
of art was concerned, I made my researches upon mere atoms 
of the colour, taken from a place where the loss was imper- 
ceptible : and without having injured any of the precious re- 
mains of antiquity, I flatter myself, I shall be able to give 
some information not without interest to scientific men as well 
as to artists, and not wholly devoid of practical applications. 
published a paper on seven colours found in a colour shop at Pompeii. Four of these 
he found to be natural colours, ochres, a specimen of Verona green, and one of pumice 
stone. Two of them were blues, which he considers as compounds of alumine and 
lime with oxide of copper, and the last a pale rose colour, which he regards as analo- 
gous to the lake formed by fixing the colouring matter of madder upon alumine. I 
shall again refer to the observations of M. Chaftal in the course of this paper. It 
will be found on perusal, that they do not supersede the enquiry mentioned in the 
text. 
