The Amazing True Colors of Ancient Greece

Welcome to a brief history of the true colors of ancient Greece. The colorful statues and buildings of ancient Assyrian and Egyptian temples is pretty well known. But when it comes to the Greeks, a surprising fact to many people is the polychrome sculpture of the classical era. Certainly, the majority of statues or architectural elements like capitals, columns and freezers were richly painted with bright colors, in some cases complementary. In such a way, the master painters of the Greek world were able to enhance the beauty of sculptural forms with contrasting tones that would allow the appreciation of details of the Greek statues painted from a far distance. The pigment rests found on buildings and statues in the Acropolis of Athens, in addition to the microscopic research in the last centuries, have proved that the Greeks were not only coloring temples' floors with red stucco, but also entablatures from top to bottom. Capitals and architraves typically with carmine pigments, cornices were richly decorated with blue, ochre, yellow and green, tympanums were blue and roof tiles were colorfully pigmented. The sculptures of the Greek world were in some cases completely or partially painted. Colors were delimiting the elements of Greek statues, painted like the clothes, hair, lips or nipples, as a mere way of enhancing the artistry of the classical forms and achieving a lifelike polychrome statuary. Unfortunately, most of the surviving classical sculpture are models made of marble, the majority Roman and their marble copies of original Greek statuary. While the Greeks tended to work with wood or bronze, materials that do not survive sacks, fires or the unforgiving time, marble statuary would last longer than any other material, still an abundant resource in Italy and Greece. Evidently, ancient Greeks used marble to build architectural wonders and therefore also used marble to create statuary that would perfectly match with the building housing them. While marble made a statue special and strong, this material was not that costly like bronze, ivory and gold, neither ordinary like wood. There are many theories questioning whether Roman sculptures tended to be monochrome or less colorful than the Greek polychromy. Possibly the majority of Roman sculptures could have solely one, two or three colors by the combination of paint and marble of different colors. Truly a fascinating topic still being researched that cannot be easily presumed. Richly decorated with colors, even though classical sculpture is usually associated with pure white marble, the reality was much different. We are so accustomed to pure white sculpture that the idea of painted statuary is shocking. The perception of white marble as the standard for classical Greek art largely began during the Renaissance. As Europeans rediscovered Greek and Roman art, they found statues and buildings that had been stripped of their paint over time. The idealized white form became synonymous with classical purity and was thus admired and emulated in neoclassical art and architecture. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when many museums were founded and collecting antiquities, the aesthetic of the time was still very much in favor of the pure white statue. Sometimes, if a statue still had traces of color, it was even cleaned off to match this ideal. In recent years, the understanding and appreciation of the polychromy of ancient Greek art have grown. Reconstructions and research projects have aimed to show the public just how colorful and vibrant these pieces would have looked in their prime. This is how most of us picture ancient Greece, when in reality this is more accurate as to what the ancient Greeks were seeing. Truly fascinating. As always, thank you for taking this journey into Greek history with us.