In June 2017, Sarah Bond, an assistant professor of classics at the University of Iowa, published an article in an online arts magazine, Hyperallergic, titled “Why We Need to Start Seeing the Classical World in Color.”34 The title refers to the little-known fact that ancient Greek and Roman statues were usually painted with skin tones and bright colors, but when these buried and weathered statues were rediscovered during the Renaissance, the paint had worn off. Renaissance artists and their patrons believed that the unadorned white marble was part of the intended aesthetic, and these artists
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