The Colouring of Greek Sculpture

      For most people Greek sculpture means beautifully white sculptured marble. Few realise, however, that bronze and not marble[11] was the Greeks’ favourite material; all their marble was coloured as well. When Renaissance artists began studying remains of the ancient past, existing Greek or Roman statues showed no traces of colour. More than a thousand years had passed since their creation, and erosion had wiped all colour into distant memory; excavated statuary underwent a vigourous scrubbing process that removed not only any encrustation of their long burial but also any paint that might have been preserved. This inadvertent cleansing led Renaissance artists, and the moderns after them, to believe in purity of form, which neither required nor permitted the addition of colour. At an early date, however, scholars began casting doubt on this so-called purity of form. They based their arguments upon four well-established facts. Firstly, the Roman Catholic Church has always had coloured statues of saints. The Church, highly conservative, has practised colouring its saints since its inception, and its inception was contemporaneous with the artistically active centuries of the early Empire. Thus, several questions arise: If classical sculpture was not coloured, where did the Christians get their different practice? If their practice consciously deviated from that of their secular contemporaries, why do we not find references to them in any of the early church fathers?

      Secondly, secular sculpture down to the Renaissance was also frequently coloured. Again, this may survive from ancient customs, for the sculpture of those times was a distant descendant of classical sculpture. Thirdly, Egyptian sculpture, and probably the Assyrian, was profusely coloured. The interaction between the Greeks and other older groups was at times intimate; Herodotos conducted a systematic study of the differences between the Greeks and the Egyptians. Had he never seen a coloured statue at home, he might have been expected to at least mention the different practice of the Egyptians; on this point he is silent. Fourthly, Renaissance sculptors’ belief in purity of form in classical times fails as an argument either way, for it was obviously founded on the appearance of ancient statues in their time.

      These considerations raise grave doubts about the generally accepted absence of colour in Greek marble, especially since the advocates of the purity of form in ancient times have advanced no better argument than bad taste, with extremists criticising it as barbarous. Being entirely subjective, such an argument is best left to itself; it needs no refutation. Evidence to this effect can be gathered from three sources – the literature of the ancients, the remains of their art, and practical experiments.

      Nothing in ancient literature has produced a definite response as to whether the Greeks painted their statues. Mr. Edward Robinson[12] concludes from the silence of ancient writers on this point that mentioning the act would have been like saying “water is wet”; that, or that it never was practised.[13] This latter thesis is contradicted not only by more recent finds, but also by certain clear remarks recorded in Greek and Roman literature. Pliny quotes Praxiteles as saying that he prized those of his statues the highest which the famous painter Nikias had touched (manum admovissei), for “so high an opinion he had of his colouring of statues” (circumlitio); and Plato, in discussing the relative value of colours, makes light of the artist who, in attempting to apply the most beautiful colour to the most beautiful part of his statue, would paint the eyes golden instead of black. Such and similar passages prove conclusively that at least some statues in antiquity were coloured; and this, as Robinson has pointed out, goes far in proving that it was the universal custom of the ancients to paint their marble statues.

      Recent finds and careful examination of existing monuments strengthen this opinion. Many statues preserving traces of colour have been found: on the Aegina pediments, for instance, and the draped female figures from the Acropolis (Illustration 1, 2, 3), and the Hermes of Praxiteles; many others clearly indicate that paint was originally applied. On the grave monument of Hegeso in Athens the lady is represented as taking something out of her jewellery box and letting it glide through her fingers. She is watching the object, which itself is not sculptured, but was originally either painted or left to the imagination. The latter alternative seems more than doubtful, both because of the difficulty of imagining the object and because of the easy explanation of its omission by accepting the theory of applied paint. Other statues exist whose uneven surface corrosion suggests the application of colour in different degrees. The stele of Aristion, shows a well-defined star on the right shoulder lap of the cuirass. The colour, now completely vanished, was once probably superimposed upon the body colour of the cuirass; it therefore did not wear off as easily as the rest, preserving that part of the marble it covered from the corrosion that overtook the rest of the stele. The figure itself did not reach the bottom of the slab, but was separated from it by a rectangular and apparently empty space. There is a very similar stele, also in Athens, which represents the warrior painted and not sculptured. It shows the same rectangular space at the bottom, on which a painted miniature horseman still can – or at least some years ago could – be distinguished. A reasonable assumption would be to imagine that the identical space of the Aristion stele was filled in the same way by the painting of a horseman. A painting at the bottom of a sculptured slab, however, only seems appropriate if the carved portions are not left entirely colourless.

      On the Parthenon frieze few accessories, e.g., bridles, halters, and ropes, are carved. Often holes are found, which apparently served as attachment points for bronze bridles and the like, while elsewhere no such holes are in evidence. In any case the addition of bronze implements would have deprived the frieze of colour uniformity, and a natural supposition would be that where no holes are found the necessary accessories were painted. This is not to suggest that every minor detail was either added in bronze or painted; much was merely suggested. The introduction of colour in the Parthenon frieze is entirely in keeping with the architectural scheme of the building, which was highly coloured above the capitals of the columns. On this point scholars agree.

      Altogether, the evidence strongly implies that the Greeks utilised colour in their marble sculpture. No statue, however, has ever produced a trace of paint upon the flesh parts, leading some to believe that only hair, lips, eyes, drapery, and accessories were painted. The nude parts underwent a process known as ganosis, which toned down the marble’s natural glare. The complete disappearance of colour on the smooth flesh parts during the intervening twenty centuries or more is not surprising and cannot be used as an argument, while the meaning of the words circumlitio and ganosis, both of which are used by classical writers in connection with the colouring of ancient statuary, remains obscure. The main argument, therefore, of those who believe in the colourless nude in ancient art is based solely upon the seemingly correct observation that the extremely delicate treatment of the nude in the best periods would have been an incomprehensible waste of time if it was to be covered by paint.

      Kore 686, called “The Sulky One”, Acropolis, Athens, c. 480 B. C. Marble, h: 58 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

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