
By the early 19th century, the systematic excavation of ancient Greek and Roman sites was bringing forth great numbers of statues, and there were scholars on hand to document the scattered traces of their multicolored surfaces. Some of these traces are still visible to the naked eye even today, though much of the remaining color faded, or disappeared entirely, once the statues were again exposed to light and air. Some of the pigment was scrubbed off by restorers whose acts, while well intentioned, were tantamount to vandalism.

organic and tend to be harder to identify; there is evidence for egg, casein, and wax.
left: “Cuirass Torso” (reconstruction), Acropolis, 460 BC
The example of the Cycladic statuettes shows that sculpture in the ancient Mediterranean received colorful decoration from very early on. In Egypt, wall reliefs and statues of stone and wood were painted in a range of colors similar to that of the tomb paintings. In Mesopotamia, the palaces of the Assyrian kings were decorated with extensive wall reliefs, whose colors are by now almost entirely faded. Wall paintings and decoration executed in glazed terracotta, as on Babylon’s famous Ishtar Gate, give us some idea of the original effect. Following the Assyrian example, painted reliefs were an integral part of palace architecture in the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BC). A fragment of a relief from Persepolis, one of the empire’s capital cities, preserves visible traces of red, green, and blue pigments.
Most ancient sculpture, whether depicting human or divine subjects, is incomplete without color. Only with the Renaissance did white or monochrome sculpture become a paradigmatic form of artistic expression. As we now know, this phenomenon would have startled ancient sculptors such as Praxiteles—just as the color reconstructions of ancient statues startle us today.
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“Young Roman,” 3rd century CE |
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So-called “Peplos Kore,” original alongside reconstruction, Athens (540 BC |
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“Lion from Loutraki” (reconstruction), Greece, c. 570–560 BC |
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