Greco-roman statuary

etruscan sarcophagi quite often still have their paint.

this one doesn't look that bad

It honestly doesn't show the skill of Roman Artists. They can produce such highly detailed marble statues yet for some reason their coat of paint looks like the work of someone who just started.

Most look terrible like this one

No, and the reason is that scientists have a tendency to only show what they KNOW (so it looks unfinished), and artistic reproductions are 80% guesswork so probably wouldn't be taken seriously by historians

But like I said, if you look at frescos you can tell that they knew how to paint and as pointed out, why bother making such a realist and detailed sculpture if you're not going to give it a equally naturalistic paint job to suit it?

There are also descriptions from Greek writers of paintings of grapes so realistic that birds tried to come and eat them, obvious hyperbole but you can see the emphasis they put on realism during the Classical period

here's a painting of a statue and it seems like not much is painted besides the hair, eyes, cape and shield rim.

What a shitty painting
Wtf

...

It's become too much apart of culture the idea of bare white marble being associated with ancient civilisations. That painted version... makes me want to vomit.

another painting showing an unpainted bronze statuette.

their paintings weren't quite as good as their statues but at least in terms of colour choices they were usually a bit more tasteful than most recreations like the op pic.

Interesting. I did not know they could paint so naturalistically.

>painting bronze

I never realized they were on a high school grade level of painting. Just assumed the skill level would match the statues. How dissapointing.

That's only a reconstruction from the base coats. It would have actually looked more like this.

is this sarcasm

It's not

why can't you paint bronze?

some of the rendering is pretty nice, just the forms are a bit off.

>Nobody knows 100% how they looked, but they did not look like that. The abomination in OP image was done by scientists (not artists or even art historians) who found minute chemical traces of what is most likely the BASE COAT of paint on the statues.
Op picture isn't a reconstruction of just the base coats, it's what the finished product probably would have looked like, the reconstruction of the base coat only would have looked like the reconstruction of Augustus here:

>why can't you paint bronze?
Bronze is supposed to shine, it would be like painting over gold.

...

I don't want to believe it. I feel violated

Source for that?
Looks like a cheap museum gimmick to me, can't find any info on who did it

This shit sounds less scientific than bird feather coloration. Microscopic imagine has shown melanosomes on ancient birds and they're able to identify them by there shape and choose what color they most likely were.

have you seen roman paintings? Fayum mummy paintings for example?

but didn't the greeks mostly use bronze instead of marble? would most of their sculptures not have been painted?

I realize it still wouldn't be taken seriously, but if someone skilled ever wants to perform a labor of love, follow ye olde painting instructions, and show us all what you come up with I would love to see it.

Why is that?

maybe something to do with them being terracotta. paint probably doesn't stick as well to marble.

All of this looks extremely catholic statue-like which i suspect is just how it should.

This. In my town we have a wooden saint statue that's painted in a very similar style.

They weren't just covered in paint they were actually coveted in a layer(s) of colored wax.

also maybe because they were protected from the elements in a tomb.

cool thanks for sharing

>Nordics claim this is nordic
>the man looks French

I have little experience with the painted Roman marbles but from what I understand since many of these were just mass produced Greek bronzes it wouldn't surprise me if the paint jobs were usually sub par.

What I DO know is that painted Greek figures in marble are and were hideous. This is especially true of the archaic pieces because the figure itself is so awkwardly close to realism, the paint just adds to the awkwardness in the hair, face, and clothing movement.

or Roman window paintings.

For how run of the mill they were at most art forms (not architecture) considering their wealth, their paintings are surprisingly advanced. They seem to fully grasp perspective (probably intuitively not mathematically) and vanishing points.

Pic related is not an actual bust, it's all the fresco.

The bronzes were never painted. Sometimes they had jeweled eyes but that's it.

I wouldn't say most Greek statues were bronze. All of the original great works were in Bronze and they were all mass produced in preserved in shit marble by the romans but the Greeks probably copied their own statues too.

The amount people care about "races" on this board is incredible. Populations mix so much over time and people aren't that diverse as a species anyways.

It's not how he really looked like in the first place since all his portraits were highly idealized. Anyway, he has light brown hair like how Suetonius described (subflavum), which does NOT mean blonde, so snowniggers btfo: rodrigorivas3d.blogspot.com/2014/05/policromia-en-la-antiguedad.html

The faces of Roman emperors were not highly idealized, their bodies were.

NICE FLAT TONES JACKASS

Not true. The appearance of Augustus varies wildly depending on the sculpture.

can you show an example of his features varying wildly across different sculptures instead of an example of a single shitty sculpture that lacks any human features at all?

Search them yourself. The one I posted has some clear differences and is probably the most accurate one since it was made right at the start of his reign unlike others made post his death where he's literally represented as a god.

WE

Is this Samurai Champloo?

...

Well the two you've posted look pretty similar despite the first one being shit.

Punked me, I had to look twice.

Why is it shit? I can see his features clearly.

I love how all these roman statesmen and soldiers pretty much look no different than the cast of the Sopranos lmao

I think Augustus looks like Stallone here: but not here: or here:

...

Ashkenazi Jews are part Italian apparently so it makes sense.

No, they look awesome. Especially for bronze and iron age peoples where various paints and dyes were rare as fuck so wealthy people made everything as colorful as humanly possible. Nobody liked bland, drab, blank statues, it literally looks like an untextured model in a videogame.

>armor with pink nipples
>Jesus Christ, what are you doing?

>implying stallone isn't constantine the great

It seems reasonable that sculptures artists of great caliber striving for realism were not painted by a bunch of amateurs.

HOLY SHIT

Because that's how they've been since the Renaissance and so that form caught on
We live in a world so saturated by colour now that we prefer bare marble, much like how armour was painted but victorian collectors scrapped the paint off because it looked better
DESU back then it was a mix of both with different audiences for painted and unpainted, much like how we have multiple forms of poetry

All that purple.

Thanks Tyre

...

wait, that's caligula

This kind of posts make me wonder how many people does [whonever makes the post] know irl?

Only the modern “reproductions”. I bet the statues actually looked lifelike in their heyday. The problem is today’s artists are generally shit.

Looks more like Geoffrey Baratheon

this nigga always looks like he's on the verge of laughing

he had the most plump of cheeks