alt Hacker NewsClassical statues were not painted horribly
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Good read! The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best.
> Why, then, are the reconstructions so ugly?
> ...may be that they are hampered by conservation doctrines that forbid including any feature in a reconstruction for which there is no direct archaeological evidence. Since underlayers are generally the only element of which traces survive, such doctrines lead to all-underlayer reconstructions, with the overlayers that were obviously originally present excluded for lack of evidence.
That seems plausible -- and somewhat reasonable! To the credit of academics, they seems aware of this (according to the article):
> ‘reconstructions can be difficult to explain to the public – that these are not exact copies, that we can never know exactly how they looked’.
I think the best explanation is that classicists are not makeup artists. I am reminded of reading some classicists' attempt to create garum in the kitchen by making some unpleasant horror of mashed fish or something back in the eighties or nineties. No one ever mentioned in those kinds of write-ups back then that they still make fish sauce in Italy. (I looked for the source I'm thinking of and it's drowned out by more credible modern attempts). There's a tendency the further north you go to think of the classical world as completely lost, discontinuous, and opaque to us, too, which adds to it.
Did he talk to people who make those reconstructions?
Why speculate from that outside perspective when you could talk to people who worked on them and the decisions they made. I think that would be very interesting. As is that‘s completely missing and it feels a bit like aimless speculation and stuff that could be answered by just talking to the people making those reconstructions. My experience is that people doing scientific work love talking about it and all the difficult nuances and trade offs there are.
His final conclusion is terrible and spoils an otherwise excellent article. Unless he has really strong evidence of it, the specialists are very unlikely to be "trolling" the public. They are scientists and conservators doing their best, working away in museum backrooms.
This reminds me of efforts to reproduce Ancient Greek music. [1] It's very similar in that there's a lot of hints, but still enough missing parts that there seem to be two schools of thought, that can even present within the same project. That linked audio is unpleasant, but perhaps they just liked it? Yet, this solo [2], comes from the exact same project - and is amazing.
I do not think tastes can change to such a degree that that first link would ever be pleasant to listen to, though that itself could be intentional for theatrical, theological, or other such purposes. Music seems innate to humanity - children generally start 'dancing' of sorts to music, 100% on their own, before their first birthday, long before they can speak or usually even walk!
The thing is that even if we do not personally like some form of music, I think we can still appreciate it. The Chinese guqin [3] is my favorite example - it goes back at least 3000 years, is played in a fashion completely outside the character of modern music - to say nothing of Western musical tradition as a whole, and yet nonetheless sounds amazing and relaxing even to a completely foreign ear.
Culture and tastes may change, but I think our ability to appreciate (or be repelled) by things is fairly consistent.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hOK7bU0S1Y
"Why, then, are the reconstructions so ugly? One factor may be that the specialists who execute them lack the skill of classical artists, who had many years of training in a great tradition."
Has he ever met people doing this stuff?.. Why write about something you know so little about? Why do people think that they can talk about things without experience, based on abstract reasoning?
I saw the traveling _Gods in Color_ exhibit when it came to San Francisco, which is where some or all of the images in this article come from. I don't think the exhibit glossed over the fact that these reconstructions are speculative, and that we can't know for sure what the originals looked like.
One quote I remember from the exhibit, which I looked up to make sure I got the wording right, was an anecdote about one of the most famous Greek sculptors, as recorded by Pliny: "When asked which of his works in marble he liked the most, Praxiteles used to say: ‘Those to which Nikias has set his hand’—so highly did he esteem his coloring of the surface."
One takeaway from that quote is the obvious: one reason we know that ancient statues were painted is that ancient authors said so. Another takeaway is that the painters, not just the sculptors, were famous, and the ancients recognized that some were better than others.
It seems a shame that there is a gap between the limits of what is possible to deduce from direct evidence, and what is likely possible given human ability. And further that the public viewing the reconstructions doesn't take away the subtleties of the difference. To me it's unlikely that some of these works weren't vastly better works of art created by what were likely master artists and craftsfolk of the day.
One way to close that gap would be to offer interpretations to be painted by modern artists to show what was possible and a viewing public could view a range of the conservative evidence based looks, and maybe a celebration of what human artistic ability can offer.
You know what's crazy too is that in colonial America all the brick buildings you see in Boston, etc were also all painted? Well, limewashed technically. You never would have left a bare brick facade. You would put 10-20 coats of thin whitewash on it, or if you wanted it to look like raw brick you would tint the limewash red, and then go in and touch up the mortar lines trompe l'oeil style with white.
Bare brick as an aesthetic choice did not emerge until the late 19th century.
A thought I had halfway through reading this article: if, hypothetically, early Medieval European art had been lost, how would it be reconstructed by modern scholars?
Would they accurately capture the lack of 'naturalism' (i.e. that flat, almost cartoonish quality) that often strikes modern viewers of Medieval art, or would they make it 'better', interpolating the gap between Roman and Renaissance styles?
This article hints at the idea that classical sculpture can't have been painted like that, because _it looks bad_ and Romans couldn't possibly have thought it looked good, yet early Medieval art was — presumably — perfectly acceptable to the tastemakers of Medieval Europe.
One issue: the paints/pigments available in times past were not the full range we have today. Sometimes they had to make things somewhat ugly to both our and their taste because that is all they have available. They would still have done their best, but there are limits.
We are hampered even more today because blues and greens tend to be sourced from organic materials that decay quick, while reds and browns are from minerals that don't decay (but flake off). Even in the best preserved art that we have there is still likely significant differences between what we see and what they saw because of this color change.
I've literally never heard anyone say that classical statues were painted "horribly", and unless I missed it, there's no sources in this article that say that, either (just several links to the same New Yorker article talking about whiteness).
What I've always heard is that classical statues were painted "brightly".
So, is this something that's so well known in the study of antiquities that no source was required, or has the author just got a personal bugbear here?
> But they fail to correct the belief that people naturally form given what is placed before them: that the proffered reconstruction of ancient sculpture is roughly what ancient sculpture actually looked like.
I'm pretty sure many museums with reconstructions of classical statues have a note on this topic somewhere on a plaque beside the statues - but who reads those?
Some of the best surviving examples of greco-roman use of colour are from Pompei. You can go and look at them yourselves, the Museo Archeologico in Napoli is a fantastic place to visit: https://www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it/en/portfolio-item/tem...
All the garish colours were prob heavily muted or diluted with varnish/oil. You don’t pant an artwork like a house, it is a layered technique and fairly similar to historic painting techniques used today:
https://emptyeasel.com/2014/12/02/how-to-paint-using-the-fle...
One idea of how ancient statues might have been colored can be seen on the pediment of the Philadelphia Museum of Art:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art...
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Just as classicists might not be the best painters, metaphysics should stay out of criticizing methodology. Ralph seems completely clueless of the research literature, and is basing his whole argument on vibes from looking at some pictures. Ridiculous.
Loved the article, the author is a smart person to doubt the changing taste hypothesis, I think everything based on "we are smarter and have better taste that the ancients" have to be extremely doubted, knowing we, the west, are the same society since the romans is so humbling
Strange article. Why didn't the author just try to talk to someone that does this work and ask?
This is fun though I sort of wonder if it's attacking a straw man. Are there any reconstruction folks who defend these?
When I visited Pompeii all I could think was, “they thought it was smart to build a city under all this basalt?!”
completely correct and so glad to see an article making this point. But, I do think the sculptures look better in ahistoric white. As an artist who has worked both with polychromy in sculpture and with really simple patinas, it's immediately obvious that a complex paint job covers a multitude of sins and distracts from the form of the sculpture, whereas a simple colour, esp white on which shadows appear so easily, shows off the sculptor's skill. Also, sculptures without painted eyes can't follow you around the room, which is a huge improvement.
The matte effect is a huge part of why these look bad. Marble does an amazing job of showing off the subtle variations in the carving and matte paint flattens everything out. A glossier finish and literally any variation of tones would vastly improve the effect.
So do not repaint them. We see that often with far more recent examples of collectible items -- clean it up and repaint it and the value tanks, even if the original is in terrible shape. If a statue is so priceless that we cannot tolerate a modern artist's skilled take on how it should look, then just leave it be.
I just learned that the site/magazine publishing this, Works in Progress, is owned by Stripe! I have no idea why, but the content is great so...thanks Stripe!
The archer example is interesting, because the original seems pretty styalized, unlike the Augustus of the Prima Porta which is obviously more realistic. I do wonder when we analyze these things, are these necessarily monocultures, or were their modern artists in ancient greece?
>> The statues depicted in the ancient artworks appear to be very delicately painted, often with large portions of the surface left white. A well-known example is the depiction of a statue of Mars at the House of Venus in Pompeii.
Oh, I see, if you look at the statue with the right eyes it's really obvious what they did. They started with a white primer then gave it a red-tinted wash all over, thinned down for the body parts so that they look flesh-coloured (ish... ) and progressively darker for the spear, helmet and shield, then the cape, and then the hair. This really helps to keep the mo... the statue together in terms of colour, and it's very efficient since the entire palette is tones of a single tint. I guess they gave the helmet and the spear the old non-metallic metal treatment, then they highlighted the helmet, the cape, the shield and the spear, and blended the feathers on the helmet.
That's a really classically modern paint job that you might find in any miniature painted to modern miniature-painting standards [1]. In fact it's surprisingly modern, I'd even go as far as to say that the one-tint wash job is positively avant-guard. I'm certainly trying that next time I paint a model with nice, big, flat areas like that one... like the statue, I mean.
>> I have given an example of this below a famous mosaic depicting a statue of a boxer, from the Villa San Marco in Stabiae. Note the subtlety of color recorded by the mosaic, in which the boxer is reddened and sunburned on his shoulders and upper chest, but not his pale upper thighs. There is nothing here to suggest that the statues depicted would have struck a modern viewer as garish.
Oh and here I guess they started with a zenithal primer, with the lighting coming from below and the right, then they did some dry-brushing with a darker tint. Nice job!
No but seriously, it's a bit dumb to think that the ancients would just apply a thick layer of basecoat and call it a day. If we do all those elaborate things today on plastic miniatures, I can imagine what they did.
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At least when astronomers fake the colours on space pictures, they end up looking prettier than the original :) :)
Even concrete made hundreds to thousands of years ago is stronger than modern day. It’s quite interesting.
I mean, I kind of disagree with the assumption that bright colors immediately mean horrible; especially when we're comparing to a dirty ruin of a mosaic for the "real" color. That's probably gotten less saturated over time too.
But that aside, I do think the author has a point here. Many people don't know ancient statues were painted at all, an academic creates a reconstruction based off of the color traces that survive to show otherwise, but likely only the underlayer, then that gets dumbed down to "this is exactly how the statue looked to the Romans!" because that's counter-intuitive and therefore more likely to get attention. It's not just statues too, but in pretty much all popular media that derives from academic subjects.
What a great article. I miss when Hacker News was for the interested and curious!
they should get someone who paints warhammer or similar to do it, they'd look amazing!
I think this is just one of those instances where historians go for “most justifiable” vs. “most likely”. E.g. all dinosaurs were stretched skin, fatless, featherless because that’s the minimum thing that fits the evidence.
Likewise, where there is paint these guys have recreated it so. But over time we will find that there were more layers more likely to fail over time and so on.
As someone who doesn't spend a huge amount of time thinking about art, this piece soothed me more than I could have expected. Thank You
> It is often suggested that modern viewers dislike painted reconstructions of Greek and Roman statues because our taste differs from that of the ancients.
Yeah. I cannot thank enough those other ancients who dug up all statues and assumed they were all white.
I'm thinking about Michelangelo's The Pieta and oh so many others. Call it a lucky accident or "differing taste" or "mastering new techniques" or whatever you want, I take Michelangelo's The Pieta vs these "correctly re-colored" statues from early Rome any time.
Even once it's been fully known they used to be flashy, hardly anyone started sculpting masterpiece then asking kids to color them: I'm thinking about late 19th Rodin's The Kiss for example.
Just like our usage of the toilets, our taste evolved, not differed.
They should have just 3D-printed the whole thing back then already!
Tldr: reconstruction of statue painting is based on residual pigments alone, and tend to look garish because the reconstruction is just an expression of the available data and fully saturated color.
But where we see wall frescoes and the like they are painted with what we would call artistic taste and not like the garish reconstructions.
So where are all the plausible painted statue reconstructions?
Yes, it's because our acquired taste. They were painted.
This is a thoughtful thread with good points on both sides. It feels like the gap between academic certainty and public expectation is the real issue. Clear context probably matters more than perfect reconstruction. Interesting discussion overall.
I asked Google Gemini Pro if the article reflects current research. I found the answer interesting enough to post it here:
The linked article by Ralph S. Weir critically examines well-known color reconstructions of ancient sculptures (specifically Vinzenz Brinkmann’s "Gods in Color" exhibition). To answer your question: The text reflects current research only in part. It is primarily a polemical essay or a debate contribution rather than a neutral scientific summary. Here is a detailed breakdown of how the article compares to the current state of archaeological research: 1. Points of Agreement with Research * The Fact of Polychromy: The text correctly states that ancient statues were almost exclusively painted. This has been consensus since the 19th century. * Methodological Limitations: The author rightly points out that reconstructions like Brinkmann’s are based on detectable pigment residues. Because organic binders and fine glazes have largely vanished over millennia, these reconstructions often appear flat and garish. Today’s researchers openly admit these models are "working hypotheses" meant to show distribution of color, not necessarily final aesthetic masterpieces. 2. Where the Text Diverges or Simplifies * Aesthetic Criticism vs. Function: The author relies heavily on modern taste ("it looks awful"). Archaeology, however, emphasizes that ancient coloring was often signaling—designed for visibility from a distance, under bright Mediterranean sun, or atop high pedestals. What looks "tacky" in a neon-lit museum was often a functional necessity in antiquity. * The "Trolling" Hypothesis: The claim that archaeologists intentionally make statues "ugly" to generate headlines is a subjective provocation. In reality, current research (such as the Tracking Colour project at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek) is working hard to understand ancient layering and encaustic techniques to move away from the "plastic look." * Outdated Focus: The article focuses heavily on Brinkmann’s early reconstructions from the early 2000s. The field has moved on since then. Newer reconstructions use authentic binders and multi-layered techniques to achieve much more nuanced and naturalistic results (e.g., the recent reconstructions of Caligula). 3. Classification of the Article The article is a classic piece of reception criticism. The author uses his background as a philosopher to question how science is presented to the public. Summary: * If you are asking if statues were painted: Yes, the text is accurate. * If you are asking if the "garish" look is the final word in science: No. Modern research is moving away from flat primary colors toward complex, naturalistic painting techniques—exactly what the author demands in his essay. The text is more of a critique of museum communication than an up-to-date report on archaeometric analysis. Would you like me to find examples of more recent, "naturalistic" reconstructions that address the author's concerns?
Weren't they painted so they could be viewed from a distance, as many of them were not exactly eye-level. It's like stage makeup, you wouldn't want to apply the same makeup for performing in a play as you do... as normal.
Why did so many people swallow this crap in the first place?
This is a thoughtful thread with good points on both sides. It feels like the gap between academic certainty and public expectation is the real issue. Clear context probably matters more than perfect reconstruction. Interesting discussion overall.
Fantastic article. I am deeply convinced that despite what popular knowledge says, human taste for beauty does not change that much across time and distance.
I am of course not a historian, but whenever some historical (or contemporary political theory) flies against what we know about human nature, I always hold it in deep suspicion
I will die on this hill, because I'm right. Painters put on the first layer in saturated colors like this, then add detail, highlight and shadow. The base layer stuck to the statues, and the rest was washed away.
This whole thing just won't go away because many people are operating outside their area of expertise on this subject.
Painters layer paint, starting with a saturated base color. These archaeologists are simply looking at the paint that was left in the crevices.