Multicolored Marbles

A gallery filled with ancient Greek and Roman art sparkles as light reflects off polished white marble. Today these sculptures define elegance and beauty. But did you know that people from ancient Greece or Rome would think these marble statues of warriors and goddesses are unfinished or damaged?

Many of the classical marble statues shown in museums today were originally painted with bright colors. By the time these relics were discovered during the Renaissance, more than a thousand years had passed since they were created. The paint had chipped away, leaving behind the white marble underneath.

Renaissance artists were so inspired by these statues that they made their own sculptures with white marble. Later, Neoclassical architects and artists followed suit, creating white marble buildings and sculptures to show their admiration for the ancient Greeks and Romans.

As technology has advanced over the past 20 years, historians have been able to learn more about ancient statues using tools like ultraviolet lights and X-rays. They’ve even identified the colors that once adorned marble sculptures and the pigments used to make the paints.

Some people, like archaeologists Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, are using these discoveries to recreate classical statues in their true colors. They use 3-D printing to replicate them and then hand-paint them with the same mineral-based paints the original artists would have used. For example, black paint was made from burned bones and vines.

These new discoveries have raised questions about what we consider beautiful and why. Eventually, this kind of research might transform the way we imagine what ancient times really looked like. Do you prefer the colorful originals or the white marble?