When we talk to you about ancient sculptures, you think about white statues, don’t you?
The monumental figures of Greek and Roman heroes, gods and goddesses, represented with an ideal beauty, symbolizing their perfection and their immortality, have fascinated people and artists through centuries.
In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, young artists studying sculpture had to copy, again and again, the ancient works of art. Since the Renaissance period, and the rediscovery of ancient arts and texts, Greek sculpture and mythology became the main sources of inspiration in artistic movements such as Classicism, symbolizing the ideal beauty, that only professional artists could represent.
Everybody believed these statues, carved in marble, were originally white, and this colour became a strong symbol of purity in the European culture. This misconception is still lasting nowadays.
In reality, ancient sculptures were painted in vivid colours, that allowed the Greeks and Romans to attract the gaze of Gods. Paintings and sculptures were for them indissociable arts, and had an important religious dimension. When these statues were unearthed in the Renaissance, most of them had lost their original colours, and artists imitated them as they were – in white colour.
The polychromy of these statues was discovered a long time ago, in the 18th and 19th centuries, but they were reproduced in white – this colour became a symbol of the superiority of European culture and History on other civilizations.
Nowadays, technologies such as ultraviolet and infrared rays allow experts to analyse traces of pigments and to create some full-color reproductions. These colored versions can look strange for us, used to monochrom statues. Scientists and archeologists admit that they don’t have the quality of ancient painted sculptures, but maybe, they are the first step that will allow us to renew our gaze on ancient art and, through it, on our History.
On the right: the Phrasikleia Kore, an Archaic Greek funerary statue created in the sixth century B.C.
Courtesy Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung
On the left: a colour reconstruction of the Phrasikleia Kore, completed in 2010.
Courtesy Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung
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