THE COLORS OF GREEK AND ROMAN STATUES.

THE COLORS OF GREEK AND ROMAN STATUES. This article in the November-December Harvard Magazine has wonderful pictures of color reconstructions of ancient Greek and Roman statues. The colors are based on scientific analysis of traces of paint left on the statues. Even if no pigment survives, the weathering of the stone can give guides to patterns. The colors in the pictures are still only an approximation since the appearance of the colors would depend greatly on the way the paint was made. Red generally survives as the color of hair on the statues, but that red was probably a base color used for brown hair. It is now thought that almost all Greek marble statues were colored. It was the Renaissance that taught us to expect a marble statue to be white.