(Image copyright Stiftung Archäologie, Munich)The Smithsonian's website has an interesting article on research by Vinzenz Brinkmann on the use of paint on ancient sculpture. It's been known for a long time that most ancient marble sculpture was painted, although in most cases the paint has disappeared, leaving the familiar white surface. There have been numerous attempts to illustrate what ancient sculpture may have looked like. But while Brinkmann's work is not particularly novel, the article does have some nice reconstructions created by Brinkmann using evidence he has collected, such as traces of paint on the stone. Some of his creations, such as the particolored Amazon archer above, are incorporate substantially more guesswork, but nonetheless are quite plausible. Many of these reconstructions toured last year in the 'Gods in Color' exhibition.
2 comments:
Would these reconstructions on show be somewhat misleading about the colouring techniques? I can't help thinking (with all apologies to the modern painters involved), that the originals may have been more sutble in tone and technique than the ones shown.
I absolutely agree. I also find the amount of pink in the skin tone of some reconstructions overdone, and wonder how they were exactly able to reconstruct the grade of paling of a color.
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