makeover at delphi, or apollo in drag

noticed a link over at metafilter a few days ago pointing to some classical greek and roman sculpture retouched to appear painted in the full color scholars believe was originally present. i’ve seen these images before but it’s as if my mind obstinately refuses to allow them in, refuses to allow the the dearly held conception of hellenistic art as a pure, elegant, platonic ideal. are my neurons each rapid firing art critics in their own right? or are they just so used to processing bleached and time sanded marble that no other images compute? because these painted statues, man, they really challenge some popular notions of what our enlightened forbearers were up to.

it’s funny in a way because if you take a minute to think on it you can sense almost instantly that the notion of greek, and to a lesser degree roman, aesthetics we hold is actually counterintuitive to the greater context of their age. the addition of bold, primary, color to the statuary as well as architecture instantly make these great heros of human enlightenment more provincial, more human, and more in line with imagery prominent at the same time in parallel cultures. with the addition of scarlet, indigo, and bright yellow they suddenly become the ancients that they were rather than some strange lost civilization probably posited by aliens or touched directly by the hand of a long departed god of good taste. at least in my mind. i’m very enamored with antiquities in the very form in which they’ve made it to us. scrubbed and eroded and clean as animal bones on the plain.


the site which metafilter initially linked to was a project, called the virtual gallery, made by some folks at miami university as a teaching tool for an upper level sculpture class.

Until now it has been nearly impossible to reconstruct the impact which marble sculpture in lively colors must have had on the viewer. Because of the expense of printing in color, relatively few color photographs of sculpture appear in the standard texts. Moreover, while Roman wall paintings and Greek white ground lekythoi give us some idea of the painter’s palette, only a few pieces of sculpture have survived with their paint intact. No one would study the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by relying on black and white photographs. It is just as unreasonable to expect students to understand fully the nature of Greek and Roman sculpture when their primary visual resources are black and white slides or photographs.

Current technology, including digitized images, computer modeling, and animation, is especially promising as a possible solution to understanding what this sculpture looked like because such technology enables us to manipulate visual images so easily.


the creators are quick to point out that though they re-colored the statues using photoshop they had no prior photoshop or retouching experience. though we might be tempted to attribute the jarring effect of the images to this i’ve seen other sources which are if anything more jarring. i think the question which just begs to be asked in regard to all of these reconstructions is a simple one: if the greeks were able to carve marble, creating subtle and sensitive human forms out of a block of rock in such a masterful fashion, why should we assume they would not paint them in a sophisticated manner as well?

as a commenter on metafilter pointed out, in the cases where traces of original paint still remain in tact, those traces would be base coats and ought not dictate too strictly the method of the restoration. many painted greek and roman artifacts remain, but by and large, as far as i know, they are in the form of pottery, which also ought not dictate. after all, we don’t do our best work on our dinner plates either. i’m no art historian so pehaps there is indeed a good reason for this assumption. my girlfriend pointed out, for instance, that color was a class consideration in ancient greece. perhaps in that sculptures were most often of gods only the brightest most expensive colors were used? i certainly don’t know. i guess i just have a hard time swallowing the idea that what has come to be thought of as a pinnacle of human creativity was ultimately gussied up like a lawn gnome. what is the truth of the matter? i guess, as with the eternal riddle of the tootsie pop, the world may never know.


in any case check out the quick time vr and sculpture sections of the virtual gallery and see for yourself.

and here are some more relevant links:

copying caligula.
hellas ancient greek art.
roman art and architecture
etc, etc, etc.

posted by jmorrison on 02/19 | sights & sounds - art | | send entry