Ancient Marble Sculpture Originally Painted

I M P O R TA N C E O F C O L O U R O N A N C I E N T M A R B L E S C U L P T U R E
1 Detail of the painted Prima Porta Augustus. Photo: Wolfram Martini, with permission from Munich
Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek.
& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009
THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT

MARBLE SCULPTURE
MARK BRADLEY
When the white marble head of an Amazon was discovered at Herculaneum in

March 2006 with delicate colours clearly preserved on the hair, eyes and eyelashes, the news came as little surprise to the world of archaeology and art history
(plate 2). Several venues around Europe, including museums in Munich, Rome
and Copenhagen, had already hosted a bold and striking exhibition of painted
Greco-Roman casts, sometimes set alongside their white marble originals,
representing not an arbitrary reconstructive imagination but many years of
intensive scientific and archaeological research. Following more than two
hundred years of research into painted marble, museums are now highly cautious
about cleaning the surfaces of their sculpture collections, and most serious
reconstructions of Greco-Roman architecture and sculpture are prepared to
integrate elements alongside their gleaming white marbles. Nevertheless,
the colourful discovery at Herculaneum was reported in several mainstream
European newspapers, demonstrating the enduring potential for paint on classical sculpture to surprise or shock the public, and the continuing need to integrate colour properly into the classical aesthetic. Winckelmanns long-lived
dogma about pure white classical art still has its supporters.1
And yet, while most discussions include a stock footnote to the effect that
ancient sculpture was coloured, paint is seldom taken into account in arthistorical studies of ancient marble sculpture.2 In spite of the striking aesthetic
differences between the original Prima Porta statue of Augustus and its painted
reconstruction (plates 3 and 4; see also plate 1), for example, the significance of its
colours has still not been integrated into serious discussions of its art-historical
importance or its artistic composition. The choice of marble for ancient sculpture
and the ramifications of the stones natural colour have received some attention,
but the difference that the application of coloured coatings might have made to
individual pieces remains on the whole underexplored.3 This is partly a result of
the disappearance of paint traces from the majority of surviving pieces of
sculpture, and partly to the degree of guesswork involved in reconstructing the
original state of pieces even where some traces remain. However, recent work by
Vinzenz Brinkmann and other archaeologists and art historians in Europe has
drawn attention back to the importance of colour on ancient sculpture, as well as
the possibilities granted by new scientific methods for more accurate and
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8365.2009.00666.x
ART HISTORY . ISSN 01416790 . VOL 32 NO 3 . JUNE 2009 pp 427-457

& Association of Art Historians 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
427
T H E I M P O R TA N C E O F C O L O U R O N A N C I E N T M A R B L E S C U L P T U R E
complete reconstructions than were

previously thought possible. Through the
use of ultraviolet fluorescence and infrared
reflection and raking light, paint traces
largely invisible to the naked eye (and the
ghosts left by paint traces on the stone)
can be detected. Furthermore, electronic
databases allow us to detect patterns in the
use of pigments on different sculptural
types and decorative features.4 We are now
in a stronger position than ever before to
enrich our appreciation and understanding of ancient sculptural polychromy.
This paper aims to complement the
pioneering technical and reconstructive
work that has recently been carried out
by approaching the subject from the
perspective of the cultural history of colour
and perception in the ancient world.
Although it will review material and findings from Archaic and Classical Greek and
2 Head of an Amazon, from a life-size statue Hellenistic periods, this study will concendiscovered near the Nonius Balbus Basilica trate on the art and literature of imperial
at Herculaneum, c. CE 60. Marble. Hercula- Rome, which at the present time is underrepresented in this field.5 The recent
neum: Antiquarium, SAP 8702. Photo:
exhibitions of painted Greek and Roman
Riccardo Giordano/ Herculaneum Consercasts at more than ten international
vation Project. Published with the kind
permission of the Soprintendenza Speciale venues and the publication of Brinkmanns
key study Die Polychromie der archaischen und
per i Beni Culturali di Napoli e Pompei uhklassischen Skulptur (2003) make this an
` Culturali. fr.
Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita
opportune moment to review the question
of what difference it makes to think of ancient sculpture in colour rather than in
monochrome. How does colour alter the visual dynamics of the Parthenon frieze?
What does a painted Prima Porta Augustus achieve that a white version does not? If
Trajans column was painted, does that change the way it was viewed? How does (or
how should) colour transform our aesthetic of ancient art?
Answers to these challenging questions can be reached by integrating the
principles of pigment distribution (which colours are used to define which
features?) and literary ekphrasis (how does an ancient viewer describe a painted
object?). This article will first review some of the most significant pieces of
sculpture on which significant paint traces have survived, and consider in individual cases the basic functions of coloured coatings and patinas. By integrating
visual material with literary evidence, it will then assess the significance of
sculptural polychromy under four headings: visibility, finish, realism and trompeloeil. Finally, as a pilot for the application of these interpretative guidelines to a
single piece of ancient sculpture, the article will revisit the Prima Porta Augustus
and consider some of the ways in which polychromy can enrich our understanding and interpretation of this key piece of Roman art.
428
3 (left) The Prima Porta statue of Augustus, c. CE 15. Parian marble, height 204 cm. Rome: Vatican
Museums (inv. 2290). Photo: Vatican Museums.
4 (right) The painted plaster reconstruction of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus, 20023. Rome:
Vatican Museums (inv. 36858). Photo: Vatican Museums.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
Painted marble is a controversial subject which has elicited little agreement since
it was first raised in the early nineteenth century. It is now generally accepted
that most and perhaps all Greco-Roman marble sculpture and architecture
(like its Egyptian and Near-Eastern counterparts) received some form of supplementary coating to modify and enhance its surfaces, which also manipulated the
colour.6 This surface treatment is now recognized to be integral to the overall
effect of the sculpture. In particular, it has been observed that the draped parts of
statues, their eyes, eyelashes, lips, hair and accessories received coats of colour,
and it is likely that the remaining areas were also treated so that the appearance
of the stone was modified.7 The backgrounds of grave reliefs and architectural
friezes were normally brightly coloured, and details in the foreground were
frequently picked out with colour and metal attachments.8 Evidence of the
gilding of specific features of marble sculpture, both statuary and relief sculpture, to produce the effect of metal accoutrements as well as to distinguish
certain features of heroic figures survives from as early as the fifth century BCE
through to the end of antiquity.9 In addition to gilding, there is widespread
evidence for the completion of marble sculpture with features in bronze, lead,
stucco or wooden accessories: weapons, armour, sceptres, hair, beards and
jewellery in these materials were added to a wide range of sculpture from all
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5 Laurence Alma-Tadema, Pheidias and the Frieze of the Parthenon, 1868, showing Pheidias unveiling
the bold colours of the frieze to his (much more subdued and paler-skinned) guests. Oil on
canvas, 72.3 109.2 cm. Birmingham: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Photo:
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery.
periods. Eyes were normally painted directly on to the marble, but they could also
be inlaid using enamel, ivory, glass, coloured marbles or gems, sometimes kept in
place with bronze eyelashes.10 Early imperial Rome also saw the proliferation of
complex and sophisticated combinations of polychrome marbles in order to
produce realistic coloristic effects, with white marbles used to render skin, darker
stones for the hair and textured marbles for the clothes: even for these pieces, one
should probably expect further embellishment by means of coatings and patinas
for the skin and paint for the lips and eyes.11 Nor did applications of colour
simply modify carved details already marked out on the stone: often paint alone
was employed to render and differentiate detail on smooth surfaces.12
Marble was symptomatic of a wide range of sculptural materials that were
treated and embellished to produce subtle and realistic effects of colour. The
surfaces of sculpture in limestone, sandstone or porous volcanic stones were often
covered with plaster or stucco, and it is generally accepted that these coverings
were painted in their entirety.13 Terracotta sculpture was also intricately painted,
its pigments often better preserved than marble sculpture owing to its porous
surfaces and the context in which it was normally kept.14 In addition, the
surfaces of bronze statuary were regularly variegated or coloured with different
alloys, inlaid or brightly painted eyes, silver-plated teeth and fingernails, darkened
hair and other features, and were sometimes gilded or coated with various
patinas and pigmentations.15 The same was probably also true of the majority of
sculpture in ivory, most notably variegated chryselephantine statuary.16 It
should be expected that antiquitys wooden statues, now almost entirely lost
430
to us, were coloured in various

ways.17 Furthermore, polychromy
whether produced by combining
stones or metals or by applying
pigments to sculptural surfaces
cut across the full range of sculpture types: busts, statues and
architectural sculpture, as well
as vase reliefs and grave stelai.
This was symptomatic of ancient
Mediterranean art in general:
mummy portraits, polychrome
vases, mosaics and wall-paintings
(to give just a few examples) regularly deployed rich combinations
of colours. Evidence of coloured
sculpture stretches from the
seventh century BCE through to at
least the third or fourth century
CE, and tempera techniques and
other forms of pigmentation
persisted in Byzantine, Medieval
and Early Modern sculpture.18 On
the whole, it seems, where there
was form there was colour.
We can no longer accept the
absence of visible paint traces on
pieces of marble sculpture as
evidence that they were originally
monochrome: it has been amply
demonstrated that excavation
methods, cast modelling, museum
histories, weathering and pigment
disintegration can account for the
near or complete disappearance of
pigment traces.19 There is now a
veritable list of celebrated ancient
marble sculptures known to have
been transformed by coats of
colour. One of the earliest, and
arguably most important, additions to this list was the sculptural
relief of the Parthenon, the subject
of heated controversy throughout
the nineteenth century owing to a
series of bold interpretations and
garish reconstructions (plate 5),
and in the 1930s for the rigorous
6 Painted plaster reconstruction of the Peplos Kore,

c. 530 BCE (1975, repainted 1996). Cambridge: The
Museum of Classical Archaeology (inv. 34a). Photo:
The Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge.
431
cleaning of the residues on the surface

of the Elgin marbles.20
On firmer ground was evidence of
colour preserved on the marble korai
and kouroi that idealized Athenian
womanhood and manhood: these
had long offended modern classical
aesthetics with their brightly painted
bodies, which imitated the decorative
luxury of the East. As examples
of Archaic sculpture, however, they
could be relegated to a pre-classical
past, before the Greeks had acquired
any classical taste. Nevertheless, the
imaginative reconstruction of the
Peplos Kore in vivid red, blue, green
and white pigments complete with
jewellery, head-dress and a meniskos,
exhibited in the first section of the
Museum of Classical Archaeology in
Cambridge since 1979 (plate 6), has
never failed to provoke a reaction from
7 Detail from the colour rendering of the
Alexander Sarcophagus, showing sophisticated visitors through its contrast to all the
21
and realistic uses of colour to depict the figure other white casts surrounding it.
Among other important pieces of
of a Persian fighter. Photo: F. Winter, Der
Archaic sculpture, the frieze of the
Alexandersarkophag aus Sidon, 1912, Strassburg.
Siphnian Treasury at Delphi (c. 525
BCE) retains traces of paint across its surfaces and has been closely studied.22
Other important Greek coloured sculptures, however, were predominantly Classical: in particular, traces of bright colours were noted by the excavators of the
Temple of Aphaia at Aigina in 1811, not only on the friezes and pedimental
sculptures, but also on the floor of the cella, the walls, the marble gutters and
antefixes and on the roof ridge tiles.23 Striking combinations of abundant
mineral pigments have also been identified and documented on the Propylaea
and the Erechtheum on the Athenian Akropolis, the Hephaesteion, the pedimental sculptures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, a wide array of architectural
and statuary sculpture from Magna Graecia, the Great Macedonian tomb at
Lefkadia, the fourth-century Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the so-called
Alexander Sarcophagus in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.24 The latter
piece in particular is thought to mark a period of major change in ancient
polychromy, with a greater focus on realism, subtle pastel colours, and a more
sophisticated aesthetic use of the underlying marble25 (plate 7).
Less work has been conducted on Hellenistic and Roman painted sculpture,
although brightly coloured human eyes appear to have been the norm, and colour
traces have been identified across a wide range of sculpture types, particularly
cult statues, garden sculpture and portraits.26 Of surviving polychrome sculpture
from Rome, only two pieces have been systematically studied. The most important
is the Parian marble statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, on which extensive
432
8 (left) The head of Caligula, c. CE 3741, photographed in 1957 before it was damaged, showing
clear traces of colour on and around the left eye. Parian marble, height 31 cm. Copenhagen: Ny
Carlsberg Glyptotek (inv. 2687). Photo: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
9 (right) The first of two painted reconstructions (Caligula A) of the head of Caligula, 2003.
Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (inv. 2687a). Photo: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
traces of multiple pigments have been carefully documented and reconstructed,

many of which are still visible to the naked eye27 (see plate 3). Another, which
along with the Prima Porta has been a highlight of the recent exhibitions of
painted replicas, is the head of Caligula in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek at
Copenhagen28 (plate 8). This head retains many pigment traces in the hairlines
and around the eyes, as well as a tempera technique applied to the skin, and was
clearly painted in its entirety. Its painted marble reconstruction (plate 9) exhibits
the same kinds of mineral pigments that have been identified on the original
piece and is among the most successful recent attempts to reconstruct sculpture
in colour. Its detailed upward-staring eyes, lacquered highlights in the hair, and
the use of black pigmentation to create the impression of depth in between the
locks provide a striking example of the sophistication and realism that may have
been applied to the process of painting Roman marbles. Roman sculptural relief
has received even less attention, although paint traces have been identified on the
intricate sculptures of Trajans column in the Forum of Trajan at Rome, a factor
that may have been instrumental in enhancing the visibility of this celebrated
monument (see below p. 436).29 Tauroctony reliefs from the cult sites of Mithras
also often retain traces of colour and gilding owing to the stable underground
conditions in which they have been preserved; these reliefs were colour-coded so
that individual features of the scenes iconography could be picked out, and
Mithras face was sometimes gilded as he stared back towards the sun (see plate 10).
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10 Mid-third-century CE relief depicting Mithras Tauroctonos (the Bull-Slayer) with gilded face as
he stares back towards the Sun, with polychrome features clearly preserved in the scene around
him. Marble, 90.5 148 cm. Rome: Terme di Diocleziano, Museo Nazionale Romano. Photo:
Terme di Diocleziano, Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome, inv. 205837.
Much more work on pigment identification and reconstruction, particularly

for Roman sculpture, remains to be carried out. Countless pieces retain traces of
pigments, ghosts left on the surface of the stone by the pigments, and tell-tale
rasp marks, and the technology is at hand to undertake comprehensive surveys;
unfortunately, pigment traces on sculpture are deteriorating rapidly every day,
and there is an urgent need to collect data while it is still available. Research
projects around the globe are confronting this challenge: besides the collaborative efforts of Munich, Rome and Copenhagen for the recent exhibitions, the
Louvre has conducted important work on its collection of Hellenistic funerary
stelai, and the British Museum is undertaking a project to produce a virtual
Parthenon in full colour.30 In New York, Mark B. Abbe is leading important
research into painted and gilded marble sculpture at Aphrodisias, and in
Copenhagen Jan stergaard, Curator of Ancient Art at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
has established the interdisciplinary Copenhagen Polychromy Network Project
(200810) in order to analyse a representative selection of classical sculptures in
the Glyptotek with a view to identifying pigment traces and attempting reconstructive work.31 The findings of all this research look set to dramatically increase
our knowledge and understanding of the range, methods and problems of
sculptural polychromy.
VISIBILITY
One aesthetic compromise that is sometimes reached by those less willing to

accept the polychromy of classical sculpture is that marbles were coloured with
434
subtle and muted pigments

and indeed there is some
evidence that Classical Greek,
Hellenistic and Roman sculpture may have been coloured in
increasingly sophisticated ways
(discussed below).32 However,
one important function of
sculptural polychromy that has
long been acknowledged, and
which has in particular been
foregrounded by Brinkmann in
his study of Archaic sculpture,
is that the bold, intense
mineral pigments used were a
means of enhancing visibility,
strengthening legibility and
distinguishing heroic or divine
figures.33 The early fifthcentury BCE figure of the
archer (identified as Paris) from
the pediment of the temple of
Aphaia at Aegina one of the
highlights of Brinkmanns
reconstructive work was
brightly painted precisely so
that it could be picked out
from a distance against the
blue background of the pediment, and not at eye level as it
was presented in recent exhibitions34 (plate 11). The pediment sculptures of the temple
of Zeus at Olympia were
also vividly painted to increase
their visibility.35 Black undercoating detected between the
ridges of drapery on the
Parthenon sculptures produced
a three-dimensional effect, and
contrasting hues may also have
helped viewers to distinguish
overlapping horses on the
north and south sides of the
frieze.36 It has also been
observed
that
pedimental
sculptures on tall buildings
were coloured more brightly
11 Painted model of the archer from the west pediment

of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, inserted into its
pedimental context in order to demonstrate the importance of colour and colour contrast for visibility.
Munich: Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek.
Photo: Vinzenz Brinkmann.
435
than those on low buildings, and that vividly coloured backgrounds helped
viewers to pick out the figures.37 Colour must have been critical to monuments
such as Trajans column, where distinctive features (such as the emperor in
purple) could be highlighted and artistic detail appreciated by viewers standing
some twenty feet or further away. Paint offers one solution to the perennial
problem of how viewers could pick out the intricate sculpted detail of such
monuments.
One effect of using bold colours to enhance visibility, it has been argued, is
that the sculptures may have appeared super-natural: they were painted not in
imitation of, but by analogy with nature, the colours bolder and simpler.38 At a
distance, however, bright colours do not necessarily make the subject seem
unrealistic; viewed at close proximity, bold pigments professionally applied to
pieces such as the Prima Porta Augustus and the Copenhagen Caligula catch the
attention and make the sacred and the powerful stand out.39 This key idea, and
its connection with Roman heroic statuary, was memorably captured by Virgil in
the first book of the Aeneid, when Venus finally reveals her son Aeneas to the
Carthaginian queen with a view to captivating her with his statuesque beauty:
He [Achates] had scarcely finished speaking, when suddenly the enveloping cloud parted and
vanished into thin air. Aeneas stood there and gleamed in the bright light (claraque
in luce refulsit), like a god in his face and shoulders; for his mother herself had breathed the
purple glow (purpureum lumen) of youth into her sons distinguished locks and a pleasant spark
(laetos honores) into his eyes just as hands add distinction (decus) to ivory, or when silver or
Parian marble is laced with yellow gold.40
Aeneas, at least in this divinely enhanced manifestation, appears both superhuman and statuesque: Virgil exploits both the metaphors of heroic statuary and
of divine lustre in order to convey his appearance and his impression on the
queen.41 The poets language captures the effects of clarity and luminosity (claraque in luce refulsit . . . lumen purpureum . . . laetos honores . . . decus) and then compares
Aeneas to a chryselephantine or Parian marble statue, its surfaces embellished by
artistic expertise just as Aeneas striking figure is evoked by Virgilian ekphrasis.
The human form provides only the raw material; artistic skill provides the
finishing touches sea-purple dye on ivory or gilded decoration on marble.
Elsewhere in the Aeneid, figures that dazzle and captivate characters with their
appearance are likened to statues: in particular, the blushing Lavinia, who says
not a word in the poem but through her beauty alone enraptures the Italian
prince Turnus and thereby crafts his doom, is also compared to an ivory sculpture
dyed with purple (12.6469). The heroic statue, then, was set up both as the
passive spectacle that drew the viewer to it, and as an active protagonist that
made an impact on the viewers world: the striking use of colour, it appears, was a
key medium through which this impact could be made.
FINISH
Colour finishes off a piece of sculpture. It endows a further, final layer of

meaning to the form of the sculpture, and allows the various characteristics of
the marble to be developed and expressed with greater sophistication. This is the
emphasis placed by most of the literary evidence that survives for the use of
436
colour on ancient statuary. In a play distinguished by its subtle use of sculpture

imagery and the blurring of boundaries between image and reality, Euripides
Helen bewails her legendary beauty, and wishes she had been wiped clean as if
she were a statue (exaleiphtheishos agalma), and made plain instead of beautiful:
the Euripidean metaphor suggests a figure in the round that had been embellished and given character by a layer of colour, and whose surface appearance
could be whitewashed and repainted less beautifully.42 In a similar vein, the
second-century polymath Lucian provides a good example of what, from one
ancient perspective, colour can do for a work of art. The essential interaction
between form, material and colour (and the role of colour in disguising materiality) is neatly demonstrated by this discussion of the final stages in the
preparation of the ideal statue. Here, Lucians statue is complete, all except for
the finish (Imagines 78):
[This final ingredient is] not the most unimportant, my friend, unless you will maintain
that perfection of form is but little enhanced by its skin (chroa) and appropriateness in each
detail, so that precisely those parts will be dark that should be dark, and those bright which
should be, and the blush will bloom upon the surface and so forth. I fear we will stand in
need of the most important feature! . . . let Polygnotos do the becomingness of her brows
and the blush of her cheeks . . . and let him also render her clothing to the most delicate
texture . . . the rest of the body let Apelles represent . . . not too white but just diffused with
blood . . . let her be throughout of a colour like that which Homer gave to the thighs of
Menelaos when he likened them to ivory tinged with purple and let him also paint (grapsato)
the eyes and make her ox-eyed. The Theban poet [Pindar], too, shall lend him a hand in the
work, to give her violet brows. Yes, and Homer shall make her laughter-loving and brightarmed and rosy-fingered . . .
Lucians Imagines playfully explores the dialogic relationship between sculpture

and poetic ekphrasis.43 In this excerpt, the speaker Polystratus points out that a
statue and any claims to poetic expression are unfinished unless chroa a skin or
layer is applied. This skin mediates the capacity of the stone to reproduce the
figure the sculptor is imitating. That this finish is a delicate and subtle process,
designed to bring the work of art to life, is paraded by Lucians exploitation of the
colour cliches of Greek verse: becomingness, faint flush, delicate texture, faint
diffusion of blood, the crimsoned ivory legs of Menelaos, ox-eyes, violet brows,
and so on, toy with concepts of colour rooted not only in other areas of sensation
and objects, but also in other literary and artistic traditions. All these finishing
touches that enrich the meaning of the subject matter are dependent on the
application of colour. An ancient statue without colour, then, is like a mannequin
without clothes.44
One further aspect of the use of colour as a finish for sculpture is that it gives
the subject matter another interpretative layer for the art historian to consider. In
particular, it allows the artist and the viewer to distinguish particular features
of the image that lend the subject matter definition and distinction. In Eclogue 7,
Virgil has a character promise a statue to Diana made out of polished marble (leui
de marmore), her ankles bound with scarlet (punicei) buskins: here, the colour
marks a special and defining honour for the statues dedication. In the Catalepton,
the poet promises Venus, if she will let him finish his Trojan epic not just incense
437
and a painted tablet (picta tabella) to decorate her temple, but also a marble statue
of a winged Cupid, his quiver painted, as is the custom, with wings of a thousand
colours (mille colores); this suggests that there were typologies of paint appropriate
for individual subjects.45 Furthermore, some of the pigments that were regularly
used on high-grade sculpture (malachite, azurite, cinnabar, Egyptian blue)
were worth their weight in gold and it is likely that connoisseurs would be
trained to identify and appreciate the cost and value of certain pigments that
were used, just as they were trained to recognize the material out of which the
sculpture was carved.46
There is some reason to believe, at least for the most important and expensive
works of sculpture, that a separate professional was commissioned to finish off
what the sculptor had started, once the sculpture had been set up in position.47
In a frequently cited passage of book 35 of the Natural History, Pliny the Elder
discusses the aesthetic tastes of the sculptor Praxiteles who, when asked which
marble works he thought most highly of, replied those that the painter Nicias had
worked on, since he valued the process of applying paint (circumlitio) to statues so
highly.48 Plutarch, in his treatise On the glory of the Athenians, compares tragic
actors to the painters, gilders and dyers of statues; like these, tragic actors put the
finishing touches to the plays they perform.49 There is some evidence that
professionals called polishers (Latin politores) existed, who developed sophisticated methods to achieve subtle finishes for gems, ivories and marbles.50 Indeed
polishing provided a convenient classical metaphor for finishing and refining
diverse features of ancient life: agriculture, clothes, speech, literature, moral
stature and physical appearance, as well as works of art, were all polished in
order to achieve refinement and perfection.51 The application of colour to marble
sculpture, then, was an integral part of the finishing process. The adjective
marble (marmareos/marmoreus) described not a raw lump of rock, but a shaped,
crafted, polished work of art.52 Part of a sculptural polish might also include
preservative coatings applied to the marble, as well as varnishes, patinas, glazes,
colour sheens, highlights and metal attachments. Furthermore, we should expect
that many sculptures were periodically restored and repainted in order to restore
colours that had faded or been damaged, and it is by no means certain that they
were always restored in the same way.53
Indeed, there is probably very little to tell between the various coats of polish
and coats of paint on Roman marble. Across antiquity, marble surfaces were
artificially enhanced by a process called ganosis, in which a layer of melted wax
mixed with olive oil was applied, which both protected the underlying marble
and enhanced the brilliance of painted surfaces.54 It seems likely that ganosis was
applied to sculptural surfaces on a regular (in some cases annual) basis, and it was
probably a standard part of restoration projects.55 Ganosis was perhaps one of a
number of available surface treatments which modified the appearance of
underlying colours. Pliny describes Apelles use of atramentum (35.97) as a finish
for his paintings, a dark preservative/varnish applied so thinly that it threw up
the brilliance of all the colours (claritates colorum omnium excitaret) while toning
down and giving sombreness (austeritas) to those that were too garish (floridi): the
effect, he adds, was similar to that of looking through tinted glass (lapis specularis).56 Finishing the artistic medium, then, was a highly complex technical
process which highlighted and enhanced the underlying material.
438
What is needed, then, is a more

sophisticated understanding of the relationship between colour and material:
one must avoid the assumption that
colour was applied in a way that disregarded the underlying material.57 The
sophisticated polishes and patinas documented in contemporary literature and
epigraphy, and the complex mineral
layers identified on certain pieces of
sculpture, should be considered as
evidence for a more nuanced use of
polychromy on classical sculpture than is
sometimes suggested by modern reconstructions. The Prima Porta Augustus,
unlike its painted plaster cast, was carved
out of an expensive block of Parian lychnites, and must have integrated colours
into its translucent surfaces so that the
marbles special properties were complemented by the pigments that brought it
to life (see below pp. 44750). Although
Carrara rather than Parian, the painted
marble replica of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Caligula (see plate 9) is more
successful in this respect. The refraction
of light entering through the paint layer
from the crystalline structures of the
marble has a significant effect on the
clarity and depth of the colours, so that 12 J. Gibson, Tinted Venus, 18511856. Marble,
the pigments do not merely sit on the height 175 cm. The skin is lightly tinted to
surface of the sculpture. Furthermore, give warmth to the marble, and the eyes,
some pigments such as cinnabar hair, apple, tortoise and hem of the robe are
penetrate the surface of the marble, so fully coloured. Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery
that they sit in the stone rather than on (inv. WAG7808). Photo: National Museums
it: this may have served, for example, to Liverpool.
suffuse a skin pigment laid on the
surface of the cheeks in a highly subtle and realistic way. Surface finishing may
have further enriched this effect: in particular, the encaustic technique (that of
applying colour mixed with hot wax to a polished surface) served to preserve and
enhance the translucent quality of the marble.58 However, still very little is
known about the nature of ancient expertise in painting sculpture (unlike
expertise in marble sculpting), and it is perhaps to the fine but imaginative
reconstructions of the nineteenth century that we must turn to best visualize the
potential for the professional deployment of coloured finishes on marble statuary.
John Gibson, whose celebrated Tinted Venus (plate 12) caused a sensation when it
was displayed at the London International Exhibition of 1862 for its strikingly
realistic nudity, defended his decision to colour his piece with the argument that
439
a cold white statue would . . . have appeared incomplete to that people [the
Greeks].59
REALISM
Viewers in the modern West are conditioned both to expect and to accept
monochrome marble figures with white hair, white skin and white eyeballs.
This is in part a consequence of neo-classical aesthetics: some of the most
iconic and memorable items of post-medieval sculpture display unblemished
white marble surfaces.60 And yet this is an artistic aesthetic that (at face value)
is categorically abstract and incongruous with the principles of classical realism.
A monochrome marble figure fractures the fundamental relationship between
art and reality: a white statue of Augustus does not populate the world of
the living.
Colour, then, circumvents this problem. Colour provides the finish that
brings the sculpture to life, that produces as they could sometimes be described
in a range of ancient discourses living images on the ambiguous line between
the real and the imaginary (Greek zoa or Latin spirantia signa, to take two
suggestive categories).61 Public statues intermingled with the world of the
living, and painted relief sculpture could be seen to recreate mythic scenes
that were so lifelike that viewers believed they had really happened.62 In the third
or fourth century CE, Kallistratos described the preparation of a Parian marble
statue of a Maenad in such a way as to render it almost alive and depart from
the law (nomos) that normally governs stone: what one saw was really an image,
but art (techne) carried imitation (mimesis) over into reality.63 This idea had also
been explored by Plato: a section of the Republic comparing the correctly painted
statue to the correctly organized state draws attention to the role of colour in
achieving mimesis:
It is as if someone were to approach us as we were painting a statue and criticize us, saying that
we did not apply the most beautiful pigments to the most beautiful parts of the image. For the
eyes, which are the most beautiful part have not been painted with purple but with black. We
should reasonably reply to him, My dear friend, do not expect us to paint the eyes so fine that
they will not be like eyes at all, nor the other parts, but observe whether or not by assigning
what is appropriate (ta prosekonta) to each part, we make the whole beautiful.64
Ancient discussions of art tended to lay great emphasis on the controlled and
sober use of correct pigments for imitation and representation.65 For contemporary philosophers, paints were artificial surfaces and therefore any connection
with the underlying object was arbitrary; the sheer diversity of artificial paints,
pigments and dyes exacerbated this difficulty, and the threat it posed to the
relationship between perception and understanding. Artistic and poetic colours
were sometimes considered incompatible: qualities of colour in Greek verse such
as rosy-fingered (rhododaktulos), for example, could hardly be reproduced by the
painter using rose dye (rhodeon chroma).66 One solution to the logical problem
posed by paints was to aim to use the correct colour (so, in crude terms, make art
veristic). Thus Platos analogy between the painting of a statue and the organization of the state draws attention to the importance of applying the correct
colours to the correct parts of the image.67 The accurate alignment of artistic
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colours with the categories of poetic

ekphrasis was also a central concern
of Lucians account of the painting of
the ideal statue at Imagines 78
(above p. 437). This emphasis on
using the proper colours in art, on
imitating, copying and reproducing
visible physical objects, goes some
way to explaining the intensity of the
Greco-Roman debate on mixing and
on using pure colours.68 This is one of
the reasons why the simple fourcolour palette (connected by some to
the elemental tetrads of early Greek
philosophy or the four humours of
Hippocratic medicine) was so warmly
embraced by a range of ancient moral
and philosophical writers, with
simple colours and colour-mixtures
corresponding straightforwardly and
accurately to the objects that were 13 Reconstruction of the bronze head of a boy
being represented.69 The artist was an with a victors fillet, c. CE 20. Munich: Staatliche
imitator (mimetes), and his objective Antikensammlung und Glyptothek (inv. 457).
.
was to replicate a head, eyes, hair, Photo: Renate Kuhling.
tunic, weapons using appropriate and
realistic colours.
Great effort was applied to correlating appropriate colours with the subject
matter of the sculpture. The marble statue of Venus in Bikini from Pompeii
shows the goddess, her pale skin represented by the largely unpainted white
marble, with jewellery and skimpy accoutrements represented by gilding and
metal ornamentation applied directly on to the marble.70 Silver alloys could be
used to evoke the pallid flesh of female subjects or figures that were dying, and
bronze was regularly used to render the tanned flesh of nude gods, athletes or
warriors.71 The first-century BCE bronze seated boxer at the Museo Nazionale
Romano (inv. 1055) has copper inlays inserted into grooves and channels across his
body, reproducing dripping blood and bruising after his fight.72 Indeed, recent
scholarship has drawn attention to the realism and sophistication of chromatic
variegation in bronze statuary (plate 13), as well as its evaluation in classical
ekphrasis.73
This emphasis on the accurate representation of life pervades a wide range
of classical art. Pliny the Elder comments (Natural History 35.4) that the painting
of portraits (imaginum pictura) was the traditional means by which Roman art
could transmit through the ages the closest likenesses of peoples faces, although
he complains that this practice had by his time died out so that imagines
had become homogenized and stereotyped. The use of clay models sometimes attested in the production of sculpture (including the technique of
casting from life), as well as the ancestral portraits that lined the atrium of
aristocratic Roman houses, point to the importance of preserving precise features
441
in representations.74 Painted masks were also used in ancient theatre, their

colours rigidly schematized so that particular character-types possessed the facial
colours that typically defined them (red-haired barbarian slave, pale noblewoman,
tanned peasant, etc.).75 This principle of colour-coding to reproduce (and reinforce) a stereotyped reality is a defining characteristic of many items of painted
marble sculpture: tanned warriors, pale females, red-haired barbarians, and
so on.76
This argument that sculptural colours were coded to represent reality (or at
least a version of reality) is quite different from that adopted by Elena WalterKarydi that coloristic effects were what really mattered in painting sculpture.77
It also differs from Valentina Manzellis argument (rooted in various strands
of anthropological enquiry) that seeks layers of colour symbolism in the choice
of colours: black/blue as a celestial and male colour versus red as a chthonic and
female colour, for example.78 Colour symbolism implies that colours exist in
their own right, independently of the objects which they qualify. An interpretation of sculptural polychromy in which colour is an extension of the underlying
form, on the other hand, highlights the use of colour to qualify, identify
and enrich the subject to which it is applied. This is not to say that sculptural
colour straightforwardly reproduces reality: bold, super-natural colours could
underwrite the ambiguity often inherent to representations of the human form
in-the-round, an interpretation persuasively applied by Richard Gordon to GrecoRoman sculpture.79
The use of colour as a tool for artistic mimesis provides one explanation for
the relative paucity of literary evidence on the practice. It was not the norm, we
must assume, to talk about the painting of sculpture as if it were a separate and
special part of the production process. Literary references were made to
outstanding features of colour (Dianas scarlet buskins, for example, or Cupids
thousand-coloured quiver), special uses of pigments, or to an artists unusual
attention to this particular aspect of sculpting (Pliny on Praxiteles), but the
customary colouring of sculptural features rarely elicited comment. Furthermore, there was no straightforward chromatic register available with which to
describe painted surfaces (there was no Greek or Latin equivalent to pink, red,
brown, etc.). Ancient thinkers (and particularly those concerned with optics)
generally considered colour (chroma or color) to be the primary object of sight,
formulated as the surface (or what is visible) of an object, rather than a separate
entity that existed in its own right.80 Mimesis, then, was an intrinsic concern in
the production of classical art, and the idea that every object should have its
proper, telltale colour was an axiom of ancient thought.
T R O M P E - L O E I L
A classical landscape of painted statues probably had more in common with a

waxworks museum than the high art of a modern cast gallery. Indeed, the
aesthetic of trompe-loeil (trick of the eye) whereby the object represented
participates in the world occupied by the viewer is one logical consequence of
artistic mimesis, and one for which the use of colour, and all the various surfaces
and attachments outlined above, was integral. Colour, therefore, disguised the
materiality of the sculpture and by doing so obscured the line between art and
reality. The result was a second population within the ancient city, intermingling
442
with the living and sharing their iconography, values and history. The possibilities, uncertainties and discomfort generated by this ambiguity between art and
life provided a fertile ground for exploration in a wide range of artistic and
literary discourses.81
Representations of sculpture in ancient painting, and particularly the rich
wall-paintings of Pompeii and other key Roman sites, offer a rich source of
information about the appearance, context and distribution of ancient sculpture.82 And yet, it can sometimes be very difficult to distinguish a statue from a
living figure in an ancient artistic representation. A small handful of examples
can be cited which unambiguously appear to depict statues, either because
of their position in the scene, or because a statue is in the process of being
completed, or because it exhibits characteristics that are statuesque, such as a
statue base, miniature dimensions, stiff pose or manifestly material features.
On the whole, however, images of classical statues tended to force the viewer to
question whether the figure was real or artificial. The ambiguous representation
of figures was in fact a primary motif in all styles of Pompeian wall-painting;
plate 14 shows a female painter, herself a figure in a framed painting, comparing
a painted statue perhaps Priapus to a framed painting at her feet (which
of the two she is about to paint is left deliberately unclear). Ambiguous figural
art was a particular characteristic of garden-paintings, in which painted
statues stared back as if they might at any moment spring to life.83 The degree to
which statues in these paintings faithfully reproduce the appearance, position
and reception of real statues is the subject of some debate, although it must be
taken as axiomatic that the painters were exploiting and parading an existing
sculptural aesthetic that challenged the division between art and life.84 To a
certain extent, these representations belonged to the provocative realm of illusionism in which the artist could deploy and explore creative uses of stance,
weight, material and colour.
Take, for example, the painting of the statue of Mars in the House of
Venus Marina at Pompeii (see plate 15).85 This armed figure, nude apart from a
red cloak that hangs down his back, is predominantly white (presumably an
indication of the marble out of which the statue is carved), although the features
of his face are painted. With the skin coloration and the pedestal, he is clearly
intended to look like a real garden statue, and yet his helmet plume is organic
and unstatuesque, and the figure stands in contrapposto, tilting to its right so
far without props or struts that a real stone statue could not stand upright.86
By merging the statuesque and the lifelike in this way, then, the painter
presented a playful and provocative interplay of art and life. Another example of
such representational ambiguity is the six pilaster-herms of satyrs and maenads
that form part of the painted architecture in the House of the Cryptoporticus
(VI.17.42): statuesque as they are, rooted fast in their architectural scaffolding,
the delicately painted faces with their wispy realistic hair stare out at the viewer
as if they were living.87 Indeed, Campanian art is rife with ambiguous representations of statuesque figures. Of course, in order to evoke this ambiguity
between art and life, the painter needed to capture elements of the statuesque as
much as he used the palette to bring his figures to life.88 It is not enough simply
to say that the painted statue imitated (and interchanged with) reality: the
materiality of art constituted a visual discourse in itself, and the theme of the
443
14 Wall-painting from the House of the Surgeon, Pompeii VI.1.10, showing

a female painter observing a framed painting and a painted statue (c. CE
5579). Naples: Museo Archeologico Nazionale (inv. 9018). Photo: Sopraintendenza Archeologica di Pompeii.
15 Detail of wall-painting showing Statue of Mars in the House of Venus

Marina at Pompeii (II.3.3). Photo: Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompeii.
444
fantastical that transcended both art

and reality was a familiar playing
field in the domain of wall-painting.89
One specific context in which
sculpture functioned explicitly as
a substitute for the real thing, and
therefore in which ambiguities between art and reality had a highly
fertile ground for formation and
exploitation, was the representation
of cult statues.90 Statues of divinities
were erected inside shrines and
temples both embodying and standing in proxy for the gods who were
supposed to live there, and it is unsurprising to find that literary accounts
frequently elide the distinction between deity and image of deity, and
visual representations of cult statues
within sacred buildings (on coins,
vases and wall-paintings, for example) 16 Apulian terracotta column-krater (bowl for
creatively exploit these ambiguities.91 mixing wine and water), c. 360350 BCE, showing
It is sometimes difficult to decide an artist painting a lion-skin on a marble statue
whether it is the statue that is being of Heracles. One of his assistants is heating a
described or depicted, or the divinity charcoal brazier, suggesting the use of the
itself. In some representations, this encaustic technique. New York: Metropolitan
very difficulty of distinguishing art Museum of Art (Rogers Fund, 1950 (50.11.4)).
from reality is playfully explored and Photo: r Metropolitan Museum of Art.
paraded by the image: a well-known
fourth-century BCE Apulian columnkrater (plate 16) depicts an artist painting the lion-skin of an unpainted statue of
Heracles while the real Heracles looks on, inviting an expectation that the statue
will be identical to the hero himself when the painter has completed his task.92
Once a cult statue is painted, clothed, armed and garlanded, it creates the
impression of the real god or hero standing around in the city and participating in
human life. At the same time, such representations could never be straightforwardly naturalistic: gods and heroes existed in the ancient mind as figures both
reminiscent of mortals and at the same time fundamentally distinct from them.
They were often larger-than-life and exhibited certain characteristics that one
might term unnaturalistic: bold intense colours, for example, or a radiant glow
produced by reflective materials like gold, marble and ivory and manipulated by
reflective pools, polished floors, or lighting and shadow inside temples.93 In addition, an interpretation of sculptural polychromy based on realism need not be
static, reductivist or unilinear: one must accept that meaning was born out of a
dialogue between object and viewer and that multiple interpretations were
possible.94
This playful (and sometimes provocative) oscillation between the sculpture
and the living figure represented by the sculpture was a well-established literary
445
topos, and the notion that a master sculptor could bring his subject literally
to life was a familiar motif in the classical imagination. Hephaestus and
Daedalus created figures out of clay and metal with such skill that they came
to life, mythological prototypes for a long list of Greco-Roman stories about
living statues.95 The eroticism of classical sculpture is a familiar playing-field
for art-historical discussion: the phenomenon of agalmatophilia is most evocatively represented by the story of the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion, who falls
in love with an ivory statue he has made, and after prayers to Aphrodite
the statue turns to flesh and comes alive.96 In the third century, the Elder
Philostratus wrote several Imagines (descriptions of images) which playfully
animated the sculptural figures he was describing. One of these (2.1) concerned
a painting in which a statue of Venus was depicted: Philostratus evokes the
painters skill by treating the image of the sculpture as an image of the goddess
herselfthe goddess does not want to seem painted, but she stands out
as though one could seize her. The implication is that colour was the medium
by which the skilled artist could blur the distinction between art and
reality.
S C U L P T U R A L P O LY C H R O M Y BE Y O N D T H E C L A S S I C A L
The deployment of colour on sculpture to blur, confuse or collapse the distinction

between art and life is by no means the artistic preserve of ancient Greece and
Rome. The story of ancient polychrome sculpture is one that is embedded in
patterns of sculptural representation in the Mediterranean from Pharaonic Egypt
to the Greco-Roman and Byzantine worlds, through Medieval Europe and the
Renaissance and Baroque periods, and which continues to perform a significant
and polyvalent role in the modern world. In 2008, the J. Paul Getty Museum
hosted an exhibition called The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from
Antiquity to the Present, which juxtaposed many of the painted classical
reconstructions that had been displayed in exhibitions across Europe and
America since 2003 to a wide variety of medieval and modern polychrome
sculptures. This exhibition demonstrated above all the role of colour in negotiating the complex interplay between sculptural art and life.97 Evidence from
Eastern art suggests that the use of polychrome sculpture to animate artistic form
was not restricted to the aesthetic discourses of the West: the 8,099 figures of the
celebrated terracotta army buried (c. 210 BCE) with the Chinese emperor Qin Shi
Huang, for example, were originally intricately painted to be as lifelike as possible
and carried real weapons, to give the appearance of a real army guarding the
emperors body.98 In addition, Indian, ancient Near-Eastern and Egyptian sculptures are also observed to have been brightly painted, so that ancestors, heroes
and gods appeared to participate in the world of the living.99
Polychrome sculpture in the ancient Mediterranean has informed and influenced a wide variety of medieval and modern art and architecture, in Europe and
beyond. Even the leading Renaissance sculptors who are credited with establishing an aesthetic of monochrome sculpture sometimes produced polychrome
pieces: Michelangelo, for example, produced Crucifix (Florence: Santo Spirito,
149294), a lifelike painted wooden figure of Christ on the cross, Donatello
produced a number of statues using painted features and gilding to render them
more realistic, and it is known that Berninis celebrated marble and travertine
446
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (164851) in Piazza Navona had certain features painted
by the artist Guidubaldo Abbatini, although no traces survive today.100 Recent
years have seen a great deal of art-historical interest in Romanesque and Gothic
cathedral architecture, and major laser-cleaning projects have led to a radical
reinterpretation of the striking role of sculptural polychromy on cathedrals such
as those at Amiens, Poitiers and Notre-Dame, not only for internal sculpture, but
also on their monumental facades. It has long been observed that wooden and
stone sculpture inside medieval European churches was often elaborately
painted, so that it appeared that the painted figures were staring inwards at the
congregation, in the same way that figures on classical frieze and pedimental
sculpture stared outwards at passers-by.101 Furthermore, the proliferation of
wax museums with their coloured death-masks and life-like figurines since
the late eighteenth century also emerged out of earlier practice: wax votive
offerings in medieval churches around Europe, wax masks preserving the
features of monarchs and nobles, and wax moulage for reproducing the internal
organs of the body in various Renaissance anatomical schools. The idea of painted
representations coming to life, an established theme in classical discourses,
has also inspired a number of modern artistic, literary and dramatic stories:
reinterpretations of Pygmalion, Carlo Collodis Pinocchio, and countless novels
and films in the genre of horror bring dummies, wax statues or inanimate
figures to life (both generating and feeding off a range of modern psychological disorders related to the reproduction of the human form). Of course,
in each of these contexts, sculptural polychromy performs various complex
functions, and it would be a mistake to impose on to all of them a single privileged interpretation of the role of colour. This said, the ambiguous line between
figural art and life, and the critical role of colour in negotiating that line, is
embedded in many areas of Western culture. Many of these practices and
discourses, it can now be convincingly argued, found their inspiration in the art
of classical antiquity.
E N V O I : T H E P R I M A P O R TA A U G U S T U S R E V I S I T E D
I have argued that colour performed a fundamental role in transforming the

appearance and impression of ancient marble sculpture: it made the sculpture
more visible, legible and striking, it finished the marble in such a way as to
produce subtle and sophisticated effects, it transformed the sculpture into a
realistic representation of life, and allowed the artist to blur the distinction
between art and life. Furthermore, coloured reconstructions of marble sculpture
need no longer be arbitrary or tribute to an art historians imagination: recent
research has allowed us to make serious advances in the study of particular pieces
of ancient sculpture. With this in mind, this article will conclude with a test-run
of some of the ideas and principles surrounding sculptural polychromy applied to
the analysis of a single piece of ancient sculpture: the Prima Porta Augustus.
With extensive pigments so accurately identified and precisely reconstructed,
the art historian cannot and should not look at the Prima Porta Augustus in the
same way again. Colour transforms the statue on artistic, iconographic and
psychological grounds.
The Prima Porta Augustus is a 2.04 m high marble statue of the emperor
which was discovered in the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, nine miles outside Rome.
447
It is an example of exquisite workmanship in Parian marble, a brilliant stone

imported from the Aegean and long valued for its fine grain and translucency.102
Perhaps commissioned in CE 15 after Augustus death, the statue is believed to be
a marble replica of a bronze original that was voted to Augustus by the Senate in
20 BCE and set up in public space at Rome. It appears to show Augustus as a
victorious general making a speech, carrying an object (perhaps a spear, now lost)
in his left hand and stretching out his right hand in a gesture of adlocutio. He
poses in contrapposto, with his right leg extended forward and his left leg bent
and heel slightly raised: the artist has captured him in medias res. His cuirass
depicts various deities, including the emperors patron deity Apollo, along
with the personifications of the territories he has recently conquered: Hispania,
Gaul, Germania and most importantly Parthia (or the Parthian king Phraates
IV), who is shown returning the stolen standards to a Roman commander
(Tiberius, perhaps). At the top of the cuirass, various cosmic deities (normally
identified as Caelus, Sol and Aurora) illuminate Augustus achievements, and at
the bottom Tellus, holding a cornucopia, underwrites the prosperity and
resources that the emperor has brought to Rome. At the right heel of the statue, a
small Cupid riding a dolphin parades the genealogical link between the Julian
family and Venus. The statue displays a series of thinly veiled references to
Augustus divine qualities (in CE 14 he was officially deified by the state): the bare
feet, the larger-than-life frame, the juxtaposition of Cupid, the idealized Apolline
features of his face. By merging Classical and Hellenistic heroic qualities with
Roman military and political prowess and achievement, the statue celebrates
the emperors exceptional role as champion of pax Romana, and at the same time
cosmocrat over the civilized world, a figure worthy of being raised to the level of
the Olympic deities.103
So much for the significance of the Prima Portas sculpted detail, which is
well-trodden territory in discussions of Roman art and the Augustan power of
images. But what of the colour? Perhaps because of its relatively late discovery in
1863, and the conditions in which it was preserved, the Prima Porta Augustus
retained many visible traces of colour on its clothing, hair and details of the eyes
and the armour.104 In the heyday of nineteenth-century art-historical interest in
sculptural polychromy, it inspired a number of colourful reconstructions, the
most significant being that of Ludwig Fenger in 1886.105 Following a careful
cleaning in 1999 which brought back to light many traces of colour that had
faded, the Vatican Museums, led by Paolo Liverani, systematically identified and
documented traces of six or seven across the original artefact, allowing at least
on a technical level the most accurate reconstruction yet to be made using a
plaster cast (plate 1). How, then, can this reconstruction enrich our interpretation
of the original artefact?
There can be no doubt that the painted Prima Porta Augustus was a striking
addition to Livias villa.106 At 2.04 metres it was just about larger-than-life,
its claim to naturalism already provocatively challenged by its godlike stature.
But the colours applied to its surfaces carried this ambiguity one step further,
simultaneously asserting and denying that the statue was alive: the expensive
pigments used (particularly red cinnabar and Egyptian blue) were both fast
and loud, making the artefact like many painted classical statues of heroes
and divinities highly conspicuous, both reproducing the naturalistic colours
448
of the emperors eyes, hair and clothes, and simultaneously transcending

those colours in an expression of divine perspicuity. The cost and value of
these pigments were widely acknowledged, and it seems likely that they
were chosen precisely because of their prestige and the honour they assigned
to the subject. These bold colours distinguished individual features of the statue;
no pigments have been identified on the flesh of the Prima Porta, or on the
backdrop of the cuirass, and it can be supposed that the individual painted
features stood out clearly against this background. Furthermore, a metal rod
down the back of the statue, as well as the roughness of carving on the rear,
suggests that the statue was displayed against a wall, which itself is likely to
have been painted in such a way as to enhance the distinctive features of the
piece. Divus Augustus, then, was meant to be noticed, still participating in
the world occupied by the viewer but at the same time detached from it by his
godlike appearance.107
Furthermore, colour finished the statue so that its constituent parts were
executed and expressed in the most evocative and sophisticated ways possible.
Colour, sometimes in fairly complex mixtures, furnished the Prima Porta
Augustus with distinctive eyes, hair, clothes and accessories. And colour provided
an additional and critical variable for the interpretation of the piece. The
statues hair, which has received a great deal of scholarly attention from the
point of view of portrait identification and Hellenistic idealization, was coated
with a reddish-brown pigment, and is perhaps the one feature of the Liverani
reconstruction that has been received with the greatest surprise and scepticism.108 According to Suetonius, Augustus hair was bordering on blond
(subflauus); quite what constituted blond in ancient Italy is a matter of some
debate, but it was a distinctive colour for heroes and divinities, particularly
in Augustan literature.109 In particular, it was the colour attributed to Apollo,
with whom Augustus had a special connection and who evoked Helios, light,
knowledge, truth, purity, the Golden Age, and all those familiar trademarks of
Augustan ideology.110 Furthermore, it is significant that the statues hair,
and particularly its colour, is not that of an old man; post-mortem, Augustus
takes on the appearance of youth and divinity. In a similar vein, the absence
of any dark pigmentation on the emperors flesh may suggest that the
artist exploited the natural colour of the stone to render the shine and pallor
of Augustus skin, another feature that traditionally characterized divine
appearance.111
Another significant feature of the Prima Porta statue on which extensive
traces of an organic red pigment have been documented is the generals
paludamentum, the scarlet cloak traditionally worn by the imperator on the
battlefield.112 Colour was a defining characteristic of this garment, which
(along with the cuirass) signals the emperors military and political authority.
Furthermore, this pigment, which was combined with a transparent lacquer,
would have penetrated the crystalline surface of the translucent Parian
marble (rather than just sitting on it) and may have caused the thin folds
of the paludamentum to glow and catch the viewers eye. Traces of Egyptian
blue identified on the fringes of Augustus tunic most likely represent the
purple murex dye that distinguished Roman political authority: in an
image that merged so many different aspects of contemporary public life
449
and ideology, the juxtaposition of such key schematic Roman colours serves to
reinforce the various strands of association and symbolism evoked by the
Prima Porta.113 Various pigments identified on the facial hair and garments of
the Parthian king on Augustus cuirass allowed the artist to distinguish the
barbarians beard and multicoloured trousers, setting him in sharp cultural
contrast to the smooth-shaven Roman commander who is receiving the
standards. Colour, then, drew attention to the sculptures outstanding physical
features. With a nuanced understanding of the cultural importance of blond
hair, pale skin or purple garments, then, it allows us to enrich our evaluation
and understanding of the work of art. Furthermore, the Prima Porta was
an artefact that did not simply elicit a single privileged interpretation at
one point in time: there is evidence that the statue underwent at least one
restoration in antiquity and with multiple layers of pigment identified on the
fringes of the tunic and on parts of the breastplate it is likely that it was
also repainted using different colours, so that its significance as a work of art
and as a representation of Romes first emperor was organic, subjective and
interactive.114
Finally, in a manner reminiscent of cult statues, colour brought the statue
to life, propelling the deceased emperor back into the world of the living.
Colour made the statues hair hair-coloured, eyes eye-coloured, lips lip-coloured
and so on, using a palette that both imitated real life and transcended it by
means of its vivid colours. For visitors to Livias villa, the statue created the
impression that Augustus was watching over them, still participating in their
lives in a way that a monochrome statue would not. Although its statue base, bold
colours and larger-than-life proportions set the figure apart from mortals and
marked it out instantly as a work of art, the idealized, heroicized, triumphant
Divus Augustus, with all his features and accoutrements meticulously and
appropriately finished off in colour, appeared to onlookers precisely as if he was
really there.
Notes
This article has developed out of ideas explored in my doctoral thesis Concepts of
colour in ancient Rome (University of Cambridge, 2004) and my book Colour and
Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, forthcoming 2009), and developed in papers
delivered to the Classics Research Workshop at the University of Nottingham in
February 2005 and the University of Texas at Austin in February 2007. Many
individuals have influenced and guided my research in this area: in particular, I
would like to thank Mary Beard, Vinzenz Brinkmann, Penelope Davies, Paolo
Liverani, Robin Osborne and two anonymous Art History readers for their helpful
advice and suggestions, and Jan stergaard and Caroline Vout for their generous
help in refining earlier versions of this article. In addition, I am grateful to the
Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing the funding that has enabled
me to complete this work, and to Maria Pia Malvezzi at the British School at Rome
for her invaluable assistance with the images. All translations in this paper are
my own.
450
The Amazon head, discovered during the work

of the Herculaneum Conservation Project
(British School at Rome/Soprintendenza
Archeologica di Pompeii/Packard Humanities
Institute), is now on display in the Museo
Nazionale at Naples. The discovery was
reported in The Times (25 March 2006 as Statue
reveals Roman lady with her make-up still on
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,135092102022,00.html, accessed October 2008). The
initial exhibitions of painted casts were: Bunte
Gotter (Munich Staatliche Antikensammlung
und Glyptothek, 20032004); I colori del bianco
(Vatican Museums, Rome, 2004); ClassiColor
(Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, 2004).
Versions of the display have also been exhibited
in Basel, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Athens,
Hamburg and Frankfurt, and in America as
Gods in Color (Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 2007
8) and part of The Color of Life exhibition (J. Paul
Getty Museum, 2008). This truly international
initiative was the first major exhibition of
sculptural polychromy in over a century. An
important symposium, Rediscovering color:
new perspectives on polychrome sculpture,
was held at the J. Paul Getty Museum at Malibu
in May 2008. On the Winckelmann aesthetic,
see Antonio Pinelli, Winckelmann e il
problema del bianco, Archeo Dossier, 29, 1987,
214; Miranda Marvin, The language of the Muses:
the dialogue between Greek and Roman sculpture,
Los Angeles, 2008, c. 6.
One significant exception is Brunilde Ridgways essay How: the role of color in Prayers in
Stone: Greek Architectural Sculpture ca. 600100 B.C.,
Berkeley, 1999, 10342.
On the choice, colour and associations of
marbles for ancient sculpture, see Rolf
Schneider, Bunte Barbaren, Worms, 1986;
Marilda De Nuccio and Lucrezia Ungaro, eds, I
marmi colorati della Roma imperiale (Exhibition
Catalogue), Rome, 2002; Mark Bradley, Colour
and marble in early imperial Rome, Proceedings
of the Cambridge Philological Society, 52, 2002,
122.
On modern techniques for pigment identification and reconstruction, see esp. Vinzenz
Brinkmann, Research in the polychromy of
ancient sculpture: introduction to the exhibition, in Vinzenz Brinkmann and Raimund
.
Wunsche,
eds, Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of
Classical Antiquity, Munich, 2007, 207. For the
potential of electronic databases, see Valentina
Manzelli, La policromia nella statuaria greca
arcaica, Rome, 1994; cf. Ridgway, Prayers in Stone,
1045.
Most of the work focuses on the Archaic period,
for which the clearest evidence survives: so
Elena Walter-Karydi, Prinzipien der archaischen Farbgebung, in Karin Braun and A.
Furtw.angler, eds, Studien zur klassischen Arch.
ologie: Festschrift F. Hiller, Saarbrucken,
1986,
2337; Manzelli, La policromia; Brinkmann, Die
10
11
12
Polychromie der archaischen und fru. hklassischen

Skulpturen, Munich, 2003; see also Ridgway,
Prayers in Stone, esp. 1045; 11014. My forthcoming monograph Colour and Meaning in
Ancient Rome discusses literary and philosophical aspects of colour usage in early imperial
Rome.
For a full nineteenth- and twentieth-century
bibliography on the subject, see Ridgway,
Prayers in Stone, 1037 and Brinkmann,
Research in the polychromy of ancient sculpture.
So Olga Palagia, ed., Greek Sculpture: Function,
Materials and Techniques in the Archaic and Classical Periods, Cambridge, 2006, 261 and 275 n.
82.
Blue pigment was normally used for backgrounds, perhaps (it has been suggested) in
imitation of the sky: for examples and discussion, see Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, esp. 11011;
Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 275 n. 83; WalterKarydi, The coloring of the relief background
in Archaic and Classical Greek sculpture, in
.
Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 1727.
Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 2612 for examples. See
also Pausanias 10.14.4; 18.7. Further on gilding,
see Patrik Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie
der Plastik: Griechenland und Rom, Stockholm,
1960, 2457, who connects the practice in
particular to the Hellenistic ruler cult and
associates it in particular with mid- and lateimperial Roman sculpture; Arnold Lawrence,
Greek and Roman Sculpture, London, 1972, 345.
Brigitte Bourgeois and Philippe Jockey, La
dorure des marbres grecs: nouvelle enquete sur
la sculpture hellenistique de Delos, Journal des
Savants, 2005, 253316. For more detail on
metal attachments, see Ridgway, Metal
attachments in Greek marble sculpture, in
Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on
Ancient Sculpture, Malibu, 1990.
For examples, see also Claude Rolley, La sculpture grecque (Vol. 1: Des origines au milieu du Ve
sie`cle), Paris, 1994, 7881; Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 262; on inlaid eyes in bronze statues, see
Carol Mattusch, Classical Bronzes: The ARt and
Craft of Greek and Roman Statuary, Ithaca and
London, 1996, 24 and n. 26 for references. From
the principate of Hadrian onwards, the iris,
pupil and eyebrows were usually carved
directly on to the stone, perhaps to provide
clearer guidelines for the painter.
See n. 3. Cf. also Pliny, Natural History 35.3 on
the practice under Nero, called lapidem pingere,
of further embellishing coloured marbles by
painting on additional colours and patterns:
on this, see Bradley, Colour and Meaning,
Cambridge, 2009, c. 3.
So Bernard Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor in
Classical Greece, New York, 1972, 60 on the
temple of Zeus at Olympia. Cf. also Rolley, La
sculpture grecque, 82 and Brinkmann, The
funerary monument of Aristion, in Brink-
451
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
452
.
mann and Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 605;
Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 113 on the Siphnian
Treasury at Delphi.
So Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, 334.
See Brinkmann, Farbigkeit der Terrakotten, in
Friedrich Hamdorf, ed., Hauch des Prometheus:
Meisterwerke in Ton, Munich, 1996, 2530.
On bronze statuary, see Hermann Born, Multicoloured antique bronze statues, in Susan La
Niece and Paul Craddock, eds, Metal Plating and
Patination: Cultural, Technical and Historical Developments, Oxford, 1993, 1929; Mattusch, Classical bronzes, 2430; id. (2003) in Brinkmann
.
and Wunsche,
eds, Bunte Gotter: die Farbigkeit
antiker Skulptur, Munich, 2003, 12631. See also
Sophie Descamps-Lequime, La polychromie des
bronzes grecs et romains and Marion MullerDufeu, Les couleurs du bronze dans les statues
grecques dapre`s les descriptions antiques, in
Agne`s Rouveret et al., eds, Couleurs et matie`res
dans lantiquite: texts, techniques et pratiques, Paris,
2006, 79102, on ancient artistic mimesis
concerned with variegated bronze statues.
For a good summary of classical and post-classical chryselephantine sculpture (including
Egyptian and ancient Near-Eastern ivories), see
Kenneth Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the
Ancient Mediterranean World, Oxford, 2001, esp.
1920. Cf. Pausanias 7.26.4: on ivory decorated
on the surface with gold and colours. Cf. also
Carolyn Connor, The Color of Ivory: Polychromy on
Byzantine Ivories, Princeton, 1998, esp. c. 3 The
ancient tradition of polychrome ivories.
On evidence for the gilding and colouring
of wood, see Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary,
1920.
See Hermann Phelps, Die farbige Architektur bei
den Romern und in Mittelalter, Berlin, 1930.
The limitations of current knowledge about
ancient sculptural pigments are summarized
well by Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 1078.
See Ian Jenkins, ed., Cleaning and Controversy: The
Cleaning of the Parthenon Sculptures 18111939 (BM
Occasional Paper 146), London, 2001; Ridgway,
Prayers in Stone, 11518. For a detailed account
of the tests, see Ian Jenkins and Andrew
Middleton, Paint on the Parthenon sculptures, Annual of the British School at Athens, 83,
1988, 183207.
For discussion and references, see Brinkmann,
Girl or goddess? The riddle of the Peplos
Kore from the Athenian Acropolis, in Brink.
mann and Wunsche,
Brinkmann, Die Friese des Siphnierschatzhauses,
Munich, 1994; see also Brinkmann The
weighing of the souls: painted names on the
Siphnian Treasury, in Brinkmann and
.
Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 549.
On these and other early discoveries, see
Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 1056; Brinkmann,
The prince and the goddess: the rediscovered
color on the pediment statues of the Aphaia
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
.
Temple, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Gods in
Color, 7097. Many of these colour traces faded
rapidly on contact with the air.
For details and references, see Palagia, Greek
Sculpture, esp. n. 82 on further recent evidence
for painted marbles.
On this piece as symptomatic of a fourthcentury BC development towards a more
sophisticated palette and a broader cultural
sensitivity to colours in general see Rolley, La
sculpture grecque, 82; Ridgway, Prayers in Stone,
1223; Rouveret, Les yeux pourpres: lexperience de la couleur dans la peinture classique
entre realite et fiction, in Rouveret et al.,
Couleurs et matie`res, 1728, esp. 1724; Brecoulaki (2006). Further on this idea, see Brinkmann, The blue eyes of the Persians: the
colored sculpture of the time of Alexander and
the Hellenistic period, in Brinkmann and
.
Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 15067 and Heinrich
.
Piening, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Gods in
Color, 16871.
The most important study in the twentieth
century was Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, esp. 181242, who argued for significant continuities between sculptures in the
Hellenistic East and those in early imperial
Rome. For an excellent recent summary, see
Jan stergaard, Emerging colors: Roman
sculptural polychromy revived, in Roberta
Panzanelli, ed., The Color of Life: Polychromy in
Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present, Los
Angeles, 2008, 4061. On a statue of Trajan
with a star-studded mantle, see Brigitte FreyerSchauenburg, Der Sternenmantel des Kaisers
.
Trajan, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Bunte
Gotter, 21215; on painted decorative features
in the Aula del Colosso in the Forum of
Augustus, see Lucrecia Ungaro and Maria Luisa
Vitali, Die bemalte Wandverkleidung der
Aula del Colosso im Augustforum, in Brink.
mann and Wunsche,
Bunte Gotter, 21618.
Under raking light, faint traces of paint have
been detected on the Laocoon sculpture; see
Bernard Andreae, Laokoon und die Grundung
Roms, Mainz, 1988, esp. plates 13 and 40.
For references and discussion, see pp. 3441.
On the Copenhagen Caligula, see Jan stergaard, Caligula in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
Copenhagen: reconstructing the polychromy of
a Roman portrait, in Brinkmann and
.
Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 17883; Heike Stege et
al., Pigment and binding medium analysis of
the polychrome treatment of the marble bust
of a Roman portrait, in Brinkmann and
.
Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 1845; Brinkmann et
al., The coloration of the Caligula portrait, in
.
Most recently, see M. Del Monte et al., Traces of
ancient colours on Trajans column, Archaeometry, 40: 2, 1998, 40312.
See Dyfri Williams et al., A virtual Parthenon
metope: restoration and colour, in Brinkmann
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
.
and Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 11217. Furthermore, Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians
University, Munich) is undertaking a systematic project to collect literary resources for
polychrome sculpture.
Although one must expect a certain margin of
error in these reconstructions: Brinkmann and
.
Wunsche,
Bunte Gotter, figs 158ab, 1778, 242
and 247 show different reconstructions of the
same sculpture.
For resistance to the intense colours of the
recent exhibitions, see the responses to Mary
Beards blog entry Were ancient statues
painted? (December 2007) http://timesonline.
typepad.com/dons_life/2007/12/were-ancient-st.
html (accessed November 2008). On developments in sculptural polychromy between the
Archaic and the Classical periods see Ridgway,
Prayers in Stone, 114; between the Classical
and Hellenistic/Roman periods, Reutersw.ard,
Studien zur Polychromie, esp. 181242.
Brinkmann, The coloring of Archaic and early
Classical sculpture, in Brinkmann and
.
Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 2843. So also Ridgway,
Prayers in Stone, 1034.
See Brinkmann, The prince and the goddess,
.
in Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Gods in Color,
7097.
Georg Treu, Die technische Herstellung und
Bemalung der Giebelgruppen am olympischen
Zeustempel, Jahrbuch des kaiserlich Deutschen
Archaeologischen Instituts, 10, 1895, 135, esp. 25
35; cf. Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 83 on the use
of bluered contrasts here; cf. Ridgway, Prayers
in Stone, 11415.
As Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 11718. Cf. Rolley,
La sculpture grecque, 83 on light and dark
materials on the Erechtheum. The use of dark
limestone for visual contrast in Greek architecture has been explored by Lucy Shoe, Dark
stone in Greek architecture, Hesperia Supplements, vol. 8, 1949, 341482.
Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, 34.
Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 1267 suggests that
the use of colours on architectural backgrounds may have been influenced by the stage
sets of the ancient theatre.
So Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor, 26. This is
also the line adopted by Ridgway, Prayers in
Stone, 11314, who argues that colours in the
Archaic period are not meant to reflect nature
but to provide contrast and legibility. Cf.
Jeremy Tanner, Nature, culture and the body
in Classical Greek religious art, World Archaeology 33 (Archaeology and Aesthetics), 2001,
25776, esp. 260 on cultural relativism in
naturalistic perceptions of the world.
One should also consider the type of background against which a statue would be
viewed: the painted backdrop of a Pompeian
house, for example, would make these figures
far less startling than (for example) the neutral
background of the Munich Glyptothek. See
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
.
Bunte Gotter, figs. 12,
21 vs. 1920.
Virgil, Aeneid 1.58693.
This passage imitates Homer, Odyssey 23.156
63, where Athene imbues Odysseus with divine
beauty, although this simile is restricted to the
gilding of silver and there is no mention of the
adornment of ivory or marble.
Euripides, Helen 2623. For an excellent interpretation of sculptural imagery in this play, see
Deborah Steiner, Images in Mind: Statues in
Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought,
Princeton, 2002, 546, esp. n. 155 where she
examines the meaning of these lines.
On Lucians subversion of the traditional
philosophical doctrines about sight and
knowedge, see Isabelle Gassino, Voir et savoir:
les difficultes de la connaissance chez Lucien,
in Laurence Villard, ed., Couleurs et vision dans
lantiquite classique, Rouen, 2002, 16777. I have
also discussed this passage in Bradley, Colour
and marble, 1718.
See Brinkmann, Armor on the naked skin? The
early Classical Cuirass-Torso from the Athe.
nian Acropolis, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Gods in Color, 1005 on a Classical torso in the
Acropolis Museum at Athens (inv. 599), where
paint alone distinguishes a muscled cuirass
from a muscled body.
[Virgil], Catalepton 14.910. Mille colores marked
out its subject matter as divinely imbued: see
Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 1.
Brinkmann, Archaic and early Classical sculp.
ture, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Gods in
Color, 2843. So also Ridgway, Prayers in Stone,
1034. Theophrastus, De lapidibus and Pliny the
Elder, Natural History book 35 devote no small
space to identifying and evaluating the
production and economy of individual
pigments. On shared knowledge and appreciation of marble types among the educated
metropolitan elite of early imperial Rome, see
Bradley, Colour and marble.
For several early modern analogies for such
artistic collaboration, see p. 33. Cf. Palagia,
Greek sculpture, 2601 on rasps, incisions and
contours applied to the stone by the sculptor to
assist the work of the painter.
Pliny, Natural History 35.133.
Plutarch, De Gloria Atheniensium 6.438E (agalmaton egkaustai kai chrusotai kai bapheis).
Inscriptiones Italiae 13.2 p. 205, 42, 13; Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum 6.7885 (politor eburarius);
6.9462a; 6.9820 6.34374a; 6.37818; 10.6638 C 2,
17; cf. Firmicus Maternus 4.14.20.
For all references, see the Thesaurus Linguae
Latinae s.v. polior, politor, politio, politus.
Festus P.71M claims that all ancient accomplishments are called politiones. For polished
sculpture, see Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.1451;
Pliny, Natural History 36.52; 36.54; 36.152;
Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4.32.2; Ammianus
453
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
454
Marcellinus 16.10.8; Prudentius, Contra Symmachum 1.348; Varro, De re rustica 1.2.10; Cicero, Ad
Quintum fratrem 3.1.1; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1.3025 [Ostia, first century BCE]
portic(um) poliend(am). . .curauit; Vitruvius 7.1.4.
For the aesthetic transformation of polished
marbles, see Bradley, Colour and marble, 58,
1618.
For example, Brinkmann in Brinkmann and
.
Wunsche,
Bunte Gotter, 40. Multiple layers of
colour have been detected on the stele of Aristogeiton and on the fringes of the Prima Porta
statue. Repainting perhaps also assisted in the
reuse of marble spolia for new sculptural
programmes, by smoothing over joins and
permitting the expression of new features: e.g.
the Hadrianic roundels of the Arch of
Constantine. For evidence of cleaning and
treating, see Inscriptiones Graecae 4.840; Pliny,
Natural History 34.99; Pausanias 1.15.4; cf.
Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis 395.24.
On ganosis, see Vitruvius 7.9.34; Pliny,
Natural History 33.122; Plutarch, Natural Questions 287D; Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture,
356; Manzelli, La policromia, 10115, 278;
Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 82; Palagia, Greek
Sculpture, 2601. For a concise survey of the
surface finishing of Greek statues, see Andrew
Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration, New
Haven, 1990, 402. See also John Pollini et al.,
Parian lychnites and the Prima Porta statue: new
scientific tests and the symbolic value of the
marble, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 11, 1998,
27584 on the Prima Porta Augustus.
Plutarch, Moralia 74E.
This passage is discussed in detail in Ernst
Gombrich, Dark varnishes, variations on a
theme from Pliny, Burlington Magazine, 104,
1962, 515. Cf. Vitruvius 7.7.1 on sil (a form of
yellow earth), regularly used for the politio of
Greco-Roman sculpture.
On the importance of the aesthetics of the
underlying stone even when it was painted, see
Bradley, Colour and marble, esp. 1011. On
Praxiteles as a pioneer for the use of white
marble for female nudes, see Boardman, Greek
Sculpture, 13. See Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, 2423 on subtle techniques for sculptural skin-toning using wax coatings.
I thank Jan stergaard for drawing my attention to these possibilities. On the encaustic
technique, see Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 261.
See Elizabeth Eastlake, The Life of John Gibson,
R.A., Sculptor, London, 1870, 212; also on the
Tinted Venus, see Panzanelli, Color of Life, 164.
For other examples of nineteenth-century
.
reconstructions, see Wunsche
(2004) in
.
Bunte Gotter, 1023,
esp. figs 4, 710.
A contrast observed by Peter Stewart, Statues in
Roman Society: Representation and Response,
Oxford, 2003, 37, and Ridgway, Prayers in Stone,
1034.
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
So John Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Late

Classical Period and Sculpture in Colonies and
Overseas, London, 1995, 1112; cf. Stewart,
Statues in Roman Society, 93 on the painting of
statues to imitate life. On the ambiguity of
religious statuary, see Richard Gordon, The
real and the imaginary: production and religion in the Graeco-Roman world, Art History, 2,
1979, 534, esp. 910 on the ambiguity of the
language in which ancient statuary was
described. For zoon see Herodotus 3.88; Plato,
Republic 515a. For spirantia signa see Virgil,
Georgics 3.34; Aeneid 6.847; Arnobius 6.16; cf.
Martial 7.84.2 (spirat et arguta picta tabella manu);
Propertius 2.31.7 on Myrons statue group:
quattuor artifices, uiuida signa, boues.
Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor, 65.
Kallistratos, Imagines 2.4.
Plato, Republic 4.420C.
For references and discussion of colour in
Greek art within a philosophical context, see
Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 2. Cf. Rouveret et
al., Couleurs et matie`res, for essays exploring
various aspects of colour in artistic ekphrasis.
So Ion of Chios (at Ath. 13.603E). Further on
this poeticartistic distinction, see James (1995)
623.
Further on this passage, see Rouveret, Les yeux
pourpres, 23. This idea recurs in Plato at
Republic 2.377E; 586B-C; cf. Cratylus 424E425B.
On this idea, see Philostratus, Imagines 1.2; cf.
Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales 725C.
On the four-colour palette, see Bradley, Colour
and Meaning, c. 2; Charikleia Brecoulaki,
Considerations sur les peintres tetrachromatistes et les couleurs austeri et floridi, in
Rouveret et al., Couleurs et matie`res, 2942.
See for example Stewart, Statues in Roman
Society, 247. Cf. Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, 2457.
So Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales 5.1.2 (with
Boardman, Greek Sculpture, 12) on the use of
silvered bronze to express the wasting expression of a dying Jocasta. The hair of bronze
heads was often darkened with pigments.
For discussion and further references, see
Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 801.
Mattusch, Classical bronzes, 2430 provides a
good outline of the various effects of bronze
sculpture. Cf. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes 28.3
comparing a boxers skin-colour to that of wellblended bronze. Pliny, Natural History 34.98 on
a bronze alloy mixed with Cypriot copper to
render purple borders on the robes of statues.
Cf. 34.140 on bronze imbued with rusting iron
to create the effect of shame.
On models in clay, plaster, wax and wood, see
Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 2623. Pliny, Natural
History 35.153 discusses the sculptor Lysistratos
creation of life masks in plaster for the
production of bronze portraits. He goes on
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
(1556) to describe plaster models used for

Roman statuary.
See David Wiles, Masks of Menander: Sign and
Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance,
Cambridge, 1991, esp. 7480, 12949 on recognized typologies of dramatic masks based on
schematic hair and skin colours. On colourcoding in physiognomy and its relationship to
theatre masks, see Bradley, Colour and Meaning,
c. 5.
See Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 83 and Ridgway,
Prayers in Stone, 28590 on painted Archaic
fragments in the Persian depot on the Acropolis; id. (1999) 110 on gendered skin tones on
the Lefkadia Kentauromachy; id. 122 on racial
skin tones on the Alexander Sarcophagus.
Walter-Karydi, Prinzipien der archaischen
Farbgebung, esp. 31, 37. Cf. Ridgway, Prayers in
Stone, 125 on early Greek sculpture.
Manzelli, La policromia, 3390.
Gordon, The real and the imaginary, esp. 910.
This idea of colour as skin is explicitly
formulated, for example, at Aristotle, De Sensu
439a6440b25 and in Lucretius Epicurean
optics: De rerum natura esp. 4.7497. The ramifications this theory holds for broader issues
and cultural differences in colour perception
are explored in Bradley, Colour and Meaning,
esp. c. 2.
Finished statues and classical trompe-loeil are
discussed by Stewart, Statues in Roman Society,
367 and 14854.
On Roman statues in wall-paintings, see
Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, esp. 182,
242; Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, 21421.
The most thorough and comprehensive study
remains Eric Moormann, La pittura parietale
romana come fonte di conoscenza per la scultura
antica, Assen/Maastricht, 1988, which catalogued nearly 350 examples of representations of
sculpture in Roman wall-paintings.
On colour, garden statues and trompe-loeil, see
Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, 207, 243.
Reviews of Moormann, La pittura parietale have
particularly focused on this difficult question.
This image is discussed in detail by Stewart,
Statues in Roman Society, 3840.
.
Cf. Andreas Gruner,
Venus ordinis. Der Wandel von
Malerei und Literatur im Zeitalter der romischen
B.urgerkriege, Paderborn, 2004, 199, 2034 on
lifelike caryatids in Augustan paintings,
supporting a highly unrealistic entablature.
Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, 40; cf. 221.
For example, Moormann, La pittura parietale,
cat. 217/19 on white pigment used to identify a
silver statue of Aphrodite in the House of the
Vettii at Pompeii.
That said, Vitruvius, De architectura 7.5.3
complains about the disintegration of ratio
ueritatis in contemporary painting. See also
.
Gruner,
Venus ordinis, 53.
90
91
92
93
94
95
The provocative ambiguity of Greco-Roman

cult statues has been comprehensively
explored by Gordon, The real and the
imaginary; for the relationship between
naturalism and culture in Archaic and Classical Greek cult statuary, see Tanner, Nature,
culture and the body; on Roman cult statues,
see Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, c. 6.; Jas
Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in
Art and Text, Princeton, 2007, 24751.
Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, 243 argues
that cult statues (as distinct from decorative
statues) present the most intense and unambiguous instances of sculptural polychromy.
See Gordon, The real and the imaginary;
Tanner, Nature, culture and the body, esp.
2623. Cf. Vitruvius 4.5.1; 4.9 on cult statues
gazing back at those who make vows and
sacrifice; Pliny, Natural History 36.13 on the
statue of Artemis on Chios, which appeared to
visitors to change its expression; cf. Pausanias
8.37.7 (with Elsner, Roman Eyes, 289) on mirrors
outside temple doors creating ambiguous
reflections of cult images.
On this image, see Rolley, La sculpture grecque,
82. Cf. Mattusch, Classical Bronzes, 24 on an early
fourth-century BCE vase fragment depicting a
life-like bronze cult-statue of Apollo inside a
Doric temple, while the real Apollo sits outside.
On the representation of statues on vases, see
Monica De Cesare, Statue in immagine: studi sulle
raffigurazioni di statue nella pittura vascolare greca,
Roma, 1997.
See for example the gilded face of Mithras
Tauroctonos (fig. 7). Further on the radiant
glow of cult images (alongside other visual,
auditory and olfactory sensations), see Gordon,
The real and the imaginary, 13; Tanner,
Nature, culture and the body, 262. Tanner
argues that the detached and unnaturalistic
appearance of Archaic Athenian cult statuary
(e.g. Archaic korai) served primarily the status
interests of an aristocratic elite and that this
gave way to the naturalism of Classical statuary
as an artistic expression of the openness,
interaction and accessibility that was concomitant with democratic culture; it would not
be difficult to insert shifts in the naturalism of
sculptural polychromy into this argument
(although Tanner does not attempt to do so).
So Elsner, Cult and sculpture: sacrifice in the
Ara Pacis Augustae, Journal of Roman Studies, 81,
1991, 5061., esp. 51 on the necessity for
additional, creative and subversive interpretations which images evoke in different viewers
and at different times. That meaning is always
realized at the point of reception is also the
line adopted by Marvin, The Language of the
Muses, esp. c. 9 Roman ideal sculpture.
On Hephaestus, see Homer, Iliad 18.3739,
41721. On Daedalus, Marion Muller-Dufeu, ed.,
La sculpture grecque: sources litteraires et epigraphiques, Paris, 2002, nos 80150.
455
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
456
This story is memorably described at Ovid,

Metamorphoses 10.24397, where the poet playfully toys with the materiality of the statue and
its strikingly lifelike appearance. Cf. Pliny,
Natural History 36.21 on Praxiteles cult statue
of Aphrodite of Knidos. Further on agalmatophilia, see Steiner, Images in Mind, 185250;
Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, esp. 2647.
For the exhibition catalogue, see Panzanelli,
Color of Life.
Jane Portal et al., eds, The First Emperor: Chinas
Terracotta Army, London, 2007, esp. 1724.
See for example Om P. Agrawal, A study of
Indian polychrome wooden sculpture, Studies
in Conservation, 16, 1971, 5668. The iconic bust
of Nefertiti now in the Egyptian Museum at
Berlin is one striking example of artistic
mimesis in Pharaonic sculpture. For general
discussion, see Donald Wilber, The role of
color in architecture, The Journal of the American
Society of Architectural Historians, 2, 1942, 1722.
One might also compare ancient Mayan
painted stucco sculptures and ceramics.
Donatellos St John the Baptist (1438) and
Mary Magdalen (c. 1455), for example, both
employ elaborate paint and gilding on a
wooden base. Cf. also Claus Sluters Well of
Moses (13961406) at Champmol, painted by
Jean Malouel (court painter to the Burgundian
dukes) and gilded by Hermann of Cologne see
S. Nash, Claus Sluters Well of Moses for the
Chartreuse de Champmol Reconsidered
(published as three parts in The Burlington
Magazine, 2005, 2006 and 2008); Gregor Erharts
Vanitas group (c. 1500), painted by Hans
Holbein the Elder. Further, see Ned Denny, ed.,
Wonder: Painted Sculpture from Medieval England,
Leeds, 2002. For an example of painted baroque
sculpture, see El Greco (c. 1600) Epimetheus and
Pandora, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (E483 and E-937). For a discussion of many of the
above pieces, see Panzanelli, Color of Life.
Cf. also the Globe Theatre in London, which
was also elaborately painted in Shakespeares
day.
Its marble-type, however, had confused
archaeologists for centuries; see Pollini, Parian
lychnites. On the importance of Parian marble,
see Bradley, Colour and marble, 1011.
For a classic analysis of the Prima Porta, see
Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of
Augustus, Ann Arbor, 1988, 18892; cf. Kleiner,
Roman Sculpture, London, 1992, 619; Karl
Galinsky, Augustan Culture, Princeton, 1996, esp.
.
15564. On the date, see Valentin Muller,
The
date of the Augustus from Prima Porta, American Journal of Philology, 62, 1941, 4969.
See Ulrico Ko
hler, Statua di Cesare Augusto,
Annali dellInstituto, 35, 1863, 43249, who relegates discussion of colour traces to a footnote
(p. 434 n. 1); cf. Guglielmo Henzen, Scavi di
Prima porta (2), Bulletino dellInstituto di Corrispondenza di Archeologia, 4, 1863, 718, who
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
mentions colour only in passing; cf. Walter

Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen
Museum, Berlin, 1903, 1920; Reutersw.ard,
Studien zur Polychromie, 21216, 244; Paolo
Liverani, LAugusto di Prima Porta, in Anna
Gramiccia, ed., I colori del bianco, Rome, 2004,
23542.
.
See Brinkmann and Wunsche,
Bunte Gotter, 24,
fig. 22.
Unfortunately, its precise location within the
villa is not known. A base discovered near the
atrium wall may have served as a suitable
statue base: see Allan Klyne and Peter Liljenstolpe, Where to put Augustus? A note on the
placement of the Prima Porta statue, American
Journal of Philology, 121, 2000, 1218.
Tanners argument (Nature, culture and the
body, 265) that detached sculptural form in
Archaic cult statuary alluded to a commitment to an elite self-identity as theoeides,
godlike, while engendering a feeling of awe
and deference towards the aristocratic elite on
the part of the demos might also be applied to
the super-human appearance of the Prima
Porta Augustus (and similar Roman statuary),
although the politics of viewing are likely to
have been very different.
The pigments may originally have been
subdued by other colours or finishes, but
evidence has disappeared. It is possible that the
red pigmentation may have been a base for
gilding, which was not uncommon on divine
and heroic statuary. On the various possibilities of red imprints on marble surfaces, see
Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 107.
Suetonius, Augustus 79. On blond hair on
Augustan heroes and divinities, see Ovid,
Amores 1.1535 (Apollo); Metamorphoses 6.118
(Minerva); Virgil, Aeneid 4.559 (Mercury). Cf.
Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 82 on representations of yellow-haired statues on vases. Some
aspects of the importance of colour on sculptural hair (esp. gilding) are discussed by Caroline Vout, Whats in a beard? Rethinking
Hadrians Hellenism, in Simon Goldhill and
Robin Osborne, eds, Rethinking Revolutions
through Ancient Greece, Cambridge, 2006, 96123,
esp. 11517.
A literary analogue to the figural scene on the
Prima Porta cuirass is Horaces Carmen Saeculare, which is particularly concerned with light
imagery (see Pollini et al., Parian lychnites,
283).
A phosphoprotein treatment identified across
the surface of the marble, as well as acting
as a preservative, is likely to have softened
unpainted parts of the statue. On candor as a
characteristic feature of the divine in Augustan
literature, see Virgil, Aeneid 8.608; [Tibullus]
3.6.1; Ovid, Fasti 3.772. On the divine
glow characteristic of classical cult imagery,
see n. 94.
112 On the distinctive colour of the paludamentum,

dyed with cochineal (a scarlet pigment derived
from crushed insects), see Pliny, Natural History
22.3; Silius Italicus 17.396.
113 See esp. Meyer Reinhold, The History of Purple as
a Status Symbol in Antiquity, Brussels, 1976. Cf.
also Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 7. Tests in
the laboratories of the Vatican Museums from
1999 to 2002 detected evidence of a milk-based
binder applied to the pigments of the statue,
which would have been particularly important

for binding the delicate blue pigment. This
binder is also likely to have had a significant
visual effect on the appearance of the colours
(see p. 438).
114 For details of the multiple pigment layers, see
Liverani, LAugusto di Prima Porta, 239, where
he suggests that the yellow pigment superimposed on to the Egyptian blue of the tunic
fringes is likely to be late-antique.
457

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I M P O R TA N C E O F C O L O U R O N A N C I E N T M A R B L E S C U L P T U R E

THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT

When the white marble head of an Amazon was discovered at Herculaneum in

ART HISTORY . ISSN 01416790 . VOL 32 NO 3 . JUNE 2009 pp 427-457

complete reconstructions than were

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to us, were coloured in various

6 Painted plaster reconstruction of the Peplos Kore,

cleaning of the residues on the surface

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traces of multiple pigments have been carefully documented and reconstructed,

Much more work on pigment identification and reconstruction, particularly

One aesthetic compromise that is sometimes reached by those less willing to

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subtle and muted pigments

11 Painted model of the archer from the west pediment

Colour finishes off a piece of sculpture. It endows a further, final layer of

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colour on ancient statuary. In a play distinguished by its subtle use of sculpture

Lucians Imagines playfully explores the dialogic relationship between sculpture

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What is needed, then, is a more

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colours with the categories of poetic

in representations.74 Painted masks were also used in ancient theatre, their

A classical landscape of painted statues probably had more in common with a

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14 Wall-painting from the House of the Surgeon, Pompeii VI.1.10, showing

15 Detail of wall-painting showing Statue of Mars in the House of Venus

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fantastical that transcended both art

The deployment of colour on sculpture to blur, confuse or collapse the distinction

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I have argued that colour performed a fundamental role in transforming the

It is an example of exquisite workmanship in Parian marble, a brilliant stone

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of the emperors eyes, hair and clothes, and simultaneously transcending

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The Amazon head, discovered during the work

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Polychromie der archaischen und fru. hklassischen

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So John Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Late

(1556) to describe plaster models used for

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The provocative ambiguity of Greco-Roman

This story is memorably described at Ovid,

mentions colour only in passing; cf. Walter

112 On the distinctive colour of the paludamentum,

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which would have been particularly important

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