Le tombe dipinte della Bulgaria. The Painted Tombs of Bulgaria. Tra l'età classica e la prima età ellenistica. From the Classical to the Early Hellenistic Period

This contextual study of funerary painting sheds new light on artistic, social, and religious traditions of the Thracian elite, and 3D technologies reveal some of the faded imagery. This is the first analysis of all pictorial documents discovered so far in 5th-3rd century BC tumular stone cist graves and chamber tombs in today's Bulgaria. As new studies detect similar patterns in other arts, painting reveals the complex interaction between Greek and Thracian communities, and confirms the impact of Greek art on Thracian's cultural history, far before the Hellenistic koine. Whether artistic methods and conventional Greek iconography penetrated the final resting places of the Thracian elite, local traditions and identity continued to be fiercely defended.