More Stuff You Know That Isn’t So – Classical Greek/Roman Statues Were Gaudy! #history #art #worldhistory #greece

[image error]Those glorious white marble statues from ancient Greece you see in museums… they’re a fraud! Not completely, but the Greeks (and Romans who copied them) painted statues in vibrant colors. This isn’t exactly news, I’ve read about it since the mid-1980s, but here’s a good article with some fine pictures.

Many statues had flecks of color: red pigment on lips, black pigment on coils of hair, mirrorlike gilding on limbs. For centuries, archeologists and museum curators had been scrubbing away these traces of color before presenting statues and architectural reliefs to the public.

Maybe the gaudy painting didn’t match a Victorian’s ideal of Greek philosophy and artistic taste. Maybe they had too little imagination to see what the ancients truly left behind.

It always tickles me to learn that what I think I know ain’t so – like the story of David and Goliath that we modern peoples totally misconstrue. That’s my current favorite.  Delightful.