Interesting post at Kottke.org on the theory that the ancient Roman and Greek statues shown in museums were originally displayed as colorfully painted.  Jason’s post links to a HarvardScience article, and via Google I found this post at Colourlovers.com that includes more photos of the 2008 exhibition.

Hard to imagine that all the statues displayed as various masterpieces were simply incomplete, but the articles and posts make sense.  In hindsight, even as beautiful as the white marble the Augustus of Prima Porta is, why would the original artist have stopped there?  Colors work.  I wonder when Caesar’s Palace is going to catch up.

One Response to “Coloring-in the White Marble”

1. Chet says:

   September 06, 2010 at 10:33 am

   Quite a few years ago there was something of a scandal in Beverly Hills where somebody put classic statues (replicas) in his front yard and had them painted. He used the excuse that he was merely trying to be true to the original. I never heard the end of that story but I don’t imagine the statues stayed very long.

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