Red and Blue in Architecture

and Artwork
– Joannes Richter -

Fig. 1: Treasury of the Athenians at

Delphi

We are admiring the bright and white marble sculptures,

but we forget they merely represent the carriers
of the religious colours red & blue...

Fig. 2: Augustus of
Prima Porta
Red and Blue
There is a strange imbalance between red & blue-combinations
and other basic colours like green and yellow. The imbalance
has been identified from the earliest forms of Jewish, Greek
and Roman cultures.
Greek temples were, as a rule, colourfully painted. Only three
basic colours, with no shades, were used: white, blue and red,
occasionally also black. Similar combinations purple, blue and
red have been documented as (25 and 3) divine commands for
garments and decorative elements in Exodus and Chronicles.
Roman masonic rules probably have been initiated by Numa
Pompilius as early as 700BC – probably as copies of the Greek
traditions, which included an overwhelming number of red &
blue combinations.
Especially alternating red & blue-decorations dominated,
which indicates a correlation to antipodes like the opposite
genders male & female – which may have been applied to
symbolize the religious fertility elements.
From a statistical standpoint the archaic temples should reveal
equal amounts of green and yellow. This however cannot be
observed in any sacred area. The only key in solving this
enigma is the idea that red & blue (including purple) must have
been symbolizing the fundamentals for all mayor archaic forms
of religion.

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The red & blue symbolism has not been terminated at the
introduction of Christianity. Instead the symbolism continued
and flowered at the Middle Age in illuminated Bibles, royal
garments and decorative elements up to the flags in modern
eras. Red & blue are still being used as symbols, even if their
keys have been lost for the majority of its' users...
The use of red & blue in special fields such as illuminated
Bibles, paintings, gender symbols or e.g. freemasonry has been
documented in the following Scribd-publications:
• Gender References for Purple, Red and Blue
• The Fundamental Color Symbols Blue and Red
• Paint It Purple - A short History of painting Red and
Blue
• Blue and Red in Notitia Dignitatum
• Red and Blue in the Middle Age
• Blue and Red Symbolism in Freemasonary
• Capita Selecta for the religious symbols Red and Blue
• Genesis - Weaving the Words in Red and in Blue
• Blue and Red in Medieval Garments,
• Blue and Red in Roermond
• Red and Blue as Gender Symbols
• Red and Blue in British Royalty
• Coloured Idols

Overall chronological reviews have been composed in The

Hermetic Codex, in The Fundamental Color Symbols Blue and
Red. Other manuscripts are listed in the appendix of The
Hermetic Codex

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Colours for Greek Temples1
Greek temples were, as a rule, colourfully painted. Only three
basic colours, with no shades, were used: white, blue and red,
occasionally also black.
The crepidoma, columns and architrave were mostly
white. Only details, like the horizontally cut grooves at
the bottom of Doric capitals (anuli), or decorative
elements of Doric architraves (e.g. taenia and guttae)
might be painted in different colours.
The frieze was clearly structured by use of colours. In a
Doric triglyph frieze, blue triglyphs alternated with red
metopes, the latter often serving as a background for
individually painted sculptures.
Reliefs, ornaments and pedimental sculptures were
executed with a wider variety of colours and nuances.
Recessed or otherwise shaded elements, like mutules or
triglyph slits could be painted black. Paint was mostly
applied to parts that were not load-bearing, whereas
structural parts like columns or the horizontal elements
of architrave and geison were left unpainted (if made of
high quality limestone or marble) or covered with a
white stucco.
Some of the examples may demonstrate the alternating use of
red & blue in decorations, which also is to be found in the
illuminated medieval Bibles.

1
Source Wikipedia: Greek Temples

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The intensive use of red & blue combinations cannot be
considered as pure decorative elements. Associated with
biblical commands in colouring elements for the Covenant Tent
and Solomon's Temple we must consider similar prescriptions
and conventions for the masons, who were in charge for the
Greek and Roman temples and sculptures.
Numa Pompilius, king of Rome, installed a religious cult for
Janus, a bipolar deity – along with Jupiter one of the earliest
and most important of all Roman deities.
According to Macrobius and Cicero, Janus and Jana (Diana)
are a pair of divinities, worshipped as the sun and moon,
whence they were regarded as the highest of the gods, and
received their sacrifices before all the others.
Probably Numa Pompilius initiated the symbolism for Roman
architecture by copying the colour symbols from the Greeks
and/or other archaic religions, which applied the sun and the
moon, symbolized by the colours red, respectively blue.
If Numa "forbade the Romans to represent the deity in the form
either of man or of beast2” he may have chosen to use colours
for symbolizing the bipolar divine concept.

Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius (753-673 BC; king of Rome, 715-673 BC)
was the legendary second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus.
One of Numa's first acts was the construction of a temple of
Janus as an indicator of peace and war. The temple was
constructed at the foot of the Argiletum, a road in the city.
2
Plutarch tells of the early religion of the Romans, that it was imageless and
spiritual.

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After securing peace with Rome's neighbours, the doors of the
temples were shut and remained so for all the duration of
Numa's reign, a unique case in Roman history.
Little is known about the temple of Janus, the two-faced god of
boundaries (Aedes Janus) which no longer exists, but it appears
on Neronian coins. The temple stood along the Argileto, the
ancient road that separated the Basilica Aemilia and the Curia
Julia, where this road entered the Forum Romanum.
Plutarch tells of the early religion of the Romans, that it was
imageless and spiritual. He says Numa "forbade the Romans to
represent the deity in the form either of man or of beast. Nor
was there among them formerly any image or statue of the
Divine Being; during the first one hundred and seventy years
they built temples, indeed, and other sacred domes, but placed
in them no figure of any kind; persuaded that it is impious to
represent things Divine by what is perishable, and that we can
have no conception of God but by the understanding".3
Numa in his regulation of the Roman calendar called the first
month Januarius after Janus, at the time the highest divinity.
Numa also introduced the Ianus geminus (also Janus Bifrons,
Janus Quirinus or Portae Belli), a passage ritually opened at
times of war, and shut again when Roman arms rested.
It formed a walled enclosure with gates at each end, situated in
the Roman Forum which had been consecrated by Numa
Pompilius. In the course of wars, the gates of the Janus were
opened, and in its interior sacrifices and vaticinia were held to
forecast the outcome of military deeds. The doors were closed
only during peacetime, an extremely rare event.

3
Source: Numa Pompilius and Plutarch, The Parallel Lives-The Life of
Numa chapter 8-7

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Livy wrote in his Ab urbe condita that the doors of the temple
had only been closed twice since the reign of Numa: firstly in
235 BC after the first Punic war and secondly in after the battle
of Actium in 31 BC.
A temple of Janus is said to have been consecrated by the
consul Gaius Duilius in 260 BCE after the Battle of Mylae in
the Forum Holitorium. The four-side structure known as the
Arch of Janus in the Forum Boarium dates to the 4th century
CE.
In the Middle Ages, Janus was also taken as the symbol of
Genoa, whose Latin name was Ianua, as well as of other
European communes.
We will start an overview of some Greek-Roman temples at the
reconstruction of a temple in Agrigent, Sicily.

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Agrigent, Sicily
In Roman religion, Concordia, "harmony" was the goddess of
agreement, understanding, and marital harmony. Marital
harmony must be considered as a religious concept. The
temple has been dated to 440-430 BC.

Fig. 3: Temple of Concordia, Akragas

Reconstruction of original painted state on a scaffolding

covering the Temple of Concordia, Akragas approximately 440-430 BC
Agrigent, Valle dei Templi, Concordia-Temple
Photograph for Wikipedia by ClemensFranz
GNU-Lizenz für freie Dokumentation, Version 1.2

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Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi
The Treasury of the Athenians was erected in 490-489BCE
using 1/10th of the spoils from the Battle of Marathon.
The oracle told the Athenians to rely on "wooden walls," which
they took to mean the ships of their navy.
The Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi reveals several red &
blue decorations, indicating a religious symbolism of the
androgynous category.

Fig. 4: Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi

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Fig. 5: Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi

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Sifnian treasury, Delphi
Most of the sculptures lost their colours. Some of these even
may be overlooked at close-ups.

Fig. 6: Sifnian treasury

Ancient Greek Relief, Archaeological Museum of Delphi

- Sifnian treasury by Fingalo
licence Creative Commons Paternité – Partage des conditions initiales à
l’identique 2.0 Allemagne

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Athena-Aphaia Temple at Aegina4
Restored fragments of the west-front of the Athena-Aphaia
temple at Aegina (490 before Christ).

Fig. 7: Athena-Aphaia temple at Aegina

4
Coloured Idols

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Although the decorative pattern is dominated by red & blue we
may also identify green and golden / yellow. These patterns
will also be found in Egyptian artwork.

Fig. 8: Greek warrior from the Temple of

Athena Aphaia at Aegina

And belong to the reconstruction of the temple's west-front

(exhibition « Bunte Götter », Munich, 2004)
Desing: Vinzenze Brinkmann et Hermann Pflug.
Painting: Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann.
Original: Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek.
All Aphaia-Photographs copied from Wikipedia have been created by
Marsyas - Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

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The international exhibition Bunte Götter (“Coloured Gods”),
organized by the Munich Glyptothek in 2004, and shown in
Istanbul in 2006 and in Athens in 2007 presented a great
number of reconstructed artworks. A number (26) of these
coloured idols have been documented in the Wikimedia
Commons in the Category:Bunte Götter exhibition.

Fig. 9: Trojanic Archer ("Paris") -

Temple of Aphaia to Aegina

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Fig. 10: Aphaia Greek Archer (detail)

Fig. 11: warrior (an archer ?),

from the Acropolis

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Polychrome Art in ancient Greece5
There were several interconnected traditions of painting in
ancient Greece. Due to their technical differences, they
underwent somewhat differentiated developments. Not all
painting techniques are equally well represented in the
archaeological record.

Fig. 12: Polychrome classic

Greek architecture

"Kunsthistorische Bilderbogen", Verlag E. A. Seemann, Leipzig

Wikimedia Commons. 1883

5
See also: Art in ancient Greece#Polychromy: painting on statuary and
architecture

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Fig. 13: Polychrome classic Greek architecture
Detail from "Kunsthistorische Bilderbogen",
Verlag E. A. Seemann, Leipzig
Wikimedia Commons. 1883

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Acropolis Athens6
Apart from the idols, which often are multi-coloured, the most
striking coloration is the alternating colouring in red and blue
of the tympanum in the Temple of Aphaia.
A similar coloured tympanum has also been found at the
Acropolis temple as reconstructed in the fries at the British
Museum.

Fig. 14: Red/blue-colours at the Acropolis temple

own photograph, British Museum, London

6
Coloured Idols

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 Fig. 15: Red/blue-colours at the Acropolis temple

own photograph, British Museum, London7

Reconstruction of the Parthenon8

The frieze was painted with bright colors over a blue

background and contained some bronze accessories. Each
pediment was 28.8 m wide and 3.4 m high (at its center) and
contained more than 25 colored and partly gilded statues on a
blue background. These figures were sculptured by Pheidias,
Agorakritos and Alkamenes among others. The skin of the
statues was painted dark ruddy brown for men and left white
for women.
7
This has been an extremely expensive photograph as British Airways got
stuck up in a Heathrow Hassle (see the report The Heathrow Hassle)
8
Info from Parthenon

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Some authors suggest that the background of each pediment
was red or left natural marble. The pedimental walls were
strictly vertical without any inclination.

Fig. 16: Reconstruction of the Parthenon by Kronoskaf

Reconstruction of the Parthenon by Kronoskaf - Snapshot of the real time

rendering of the prototype.
Courtesy of Kronoskaf.com
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

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Red & Blue in Roman Temples
"De architectura libri decem" by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio 9
seems to be the only ancient source for Roman architecture.
The work has been devoted to his master emperor Augustus.

Ornamental Colours
Vitruvius describes the colour for the triglyphs in detail
(Chapter 2-2):
Following the arrangement of timber framing, workmen
have imitated, both in stone and marble, the disposition
of timbers in sacred edifices, thinking such a
distribution ought to be attended to; because some
antientº artificers, having laid the beams so that they ran
over from the inner face of the walls, and projected
beyond their external face, filled up the spaces between
the beams, and ornamented the cornices and upper parts
with wood-work elegantly wrought. They then cut off
the ends of the beams that projected over the external
face of the wall, flush with its face; the appearance
whereof being unpleasing, they fixed, on the end of
each beam so cut, indented tablets, similar to the
triglyphs now in use, and painted them with a waxen
composition of a blue colour, so that the ends of the
beams in question might not be unpleasant to the eye.
Thus the ends of the timbers covered with tablets,
indented as just mentioned, gave rise to the triglyph and
metopa in the Doric order.

9
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio: de Architectura, Book IV

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Blue triglyphs have also been found in the Greek temples and
we may assume the Romans copied these traditions from the
Greeks.
A note to the copyrighted photograph of a reconstructed blue
triglyph (designed by Gottfried von Semper) documents the
controversy of archaeologists in the past centuries. The only
element they agreed on was the triglyphs being blue.

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Augustus of Prima Porta
Augustus of Prima Porta (Italian: Augusto di Prima Porta) is a
2.04m high marble statue of Augustus Caesar which was
discovered on April 20, 1863, in the Villa of Livia at Prima
Porta, near Rome. Augustus Caesar's wife, Livia Drusilla,
retired to the villa after his death. The sculpture is now
displayed in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican Museums.

Fig. 17: Augustus of Prima Porta

It is almost certain that the Augustus was originally painted,

but so few traces remain today (having been lost in the ground
and having faded since discovery) that historians have had to
fall back on old watercolours and new scientific investigations
for evidence.

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Vincenz Brinkmann of Munich researched the use of color on
ancient sculpture in the 1980s using ultraviolet rays to find
traces of color.
Today, the Vatican Museums have produced a copy of the
statue so as to paint it in the theorized original colours, as
confirmed when the statue was cleaned in 1999 : it can be
viewed here. However, an art historian of the University of St
Andrews in Scotland, Fabio Barry, has criticized this
reconstitution as unsubtle and exaggerated.

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Peplos Kore (with traces of colour)
The Peplos Kore (with traces of colour) at the Acropolis
Museum from ca. 510 BCE has also been identified as a
polychrome sculpture.

Fig. 18: Marble Kore Extended

Hand

510BC, in the Acropolis Museum, Athena

(computer-simulated) colours by Doug Stern

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A painted reconstruction for a „Peploskore“ has been
reconstructed at Cambridge. The image may be viewed in the
website „Peploskore“ for the Hall of Sculptures (Basel). In
paintings and sculptures the artists preferred red and blue in the
decorations for garments10.

10
Source: „Skulptur des Monats“ Februar 2004 - Die sogenannte
„Peploskore“

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The Nikolai-church at Stralsund
A great many details such as keystones, ribs and fences in
(modern or originally) Catholic churches have been decorated
in red & blue.

Fig. 19: Blue & red decorations - Stralsund.

The photograph illustrates a few decorations after restoration of
the Nikolai-church at Stralsund.11 Originally all metallic fences,
keystones and roofs in this church had been painted in bright
PIE-colours red & blue. Only part of building has been restored
up till now (2010).

11
The Indo Europeans - A Ground Zero for Civilisation

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Basilica of Saint Servatius, Maastricht
The portico is a fine example of the combination of red, blue
and a minor amount of green, but has been reconstructed 1885
and may deviate from the original.

Fig. 20: Portico of the Basilica of Saint Servatius,

Maastricht
own work, July 2010

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Nefertiti bust 12
Compared to the Greek artwork we may consider the Picture of
the Nefertiti bust in Neues Museum, Berlin, which applies a
combination of red, blue and green.

Fig. 21: Nefertiti bust in Neues Museum, Berlin

Zserghei
public domain
Wikimedia Commons.

12
Coloured Idols

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The Antipodes Red & Blue
Most medieval churches reveal the same red & blue alternating
structures that have been reconstructed at the Greek and
Roman sculptures and temples.
There has been a common idea shared by Egyptians, Romans,
Greeks and Jewish people – probably even at a global level for
the “globe” of archaic eras.
Several concepts may have been used to develop the archaic
idea of these antipodes. I will try to explain some of these
suggestions.

The sun and the moon

Red and blue may have been symbolized by various objects,
such as the sun and the moon, and their attributes male,
respectively female. A red, male sun and a blue, female moon
may have been considered as metaphysical, divine antipodes,
which would explain their inclusion in the weekdays Sunday
and Monday. The sun and the moon have been considered as
partners, which is clearly demonstrated by their role in the
alchemical manuscripts such as Atalanta fugiens (1618)13.
According to Gary Gilligan14 the Egyptians always have
painted the sun as a red disk, except during the 17 years of the
strange Aten-religion in the Amarna era.

13
Die androgyne Symbolik der Atalanta Fugiens
14
Why was Egypt's Re (Ra) RED and not yellow? By Gary Gilligan –
contains numerous examples of red solar discs

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Sexual Organs
In natural biological environments red and blue are exceptional
colours, contrasting to the natural elements green and yellow.
Biologically plants will prefer green colour for metabolism and
additionally brown for their structural (wooden) support, or
yellow for the ancient foliage.
Red and blue will be reserved for reproduction to attract the
various insects. This way the red and blue flowers may be
considered as the sexual organs for the plants.

The Rainbow
Probably for biological reasons the red and blue colours are
located at the lower respectively upper border of the rainbow's
spectre, in which yellow and green as the most useful elements
in nature's metabolism are to be found in a central position.
Red and blue however are the religious symbols for
reproduction, which has been identified as the only way
towards eternity.

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Conclusion
The marble statues and bright white architectures we are
admiring at our Mediterranean holidays are not the artworks
the Greeks and Romans ever intended to create. These pale
sparkling artworks are merely the skeletons for the religious
symbols they have been carrying. The majority of these ancient
sculptures and temples may have been illuminated by bright
colours red and blue.
The earliest archaic artists probably did not paint their marble
sculptures for beauty, but to express the religious symbolism of
the early religion, which had been founded on antipodes –
probably the genders in a fertility cult - symbolized in a male
sun and a female moon.
As a remarkable fact we may identify the same symbolic
illuminations in medieval churches, illuminated Bibles and
similar decorations.
Right now most of these symbols have disappeared, worn off
by centuries of smoke, dirt and polishing hands. Some of the
colours may even have been removed deliberately to eliminate
the ancient religious symbols.
At the moment the last of the bright Egyptian colours are being
removed right now by exposing the fragile artworks to tourists,
who are swaying their cameras in the tombs and temples. The
intense sunlight and the flash-lights are bleaching the pigments.
Within a few decades the temples and tombs will be deprived
of their last symbolic colours turning them into the same pale
sculptures we are visiting in Rome and Athens.

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And it's true - in Greece, Rome and Asia Minor we are already
admiring the bright and white marble sculptures, but we forget
they merely represent the carriers of the religious colours red &
blue...

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Contents
Red and Blue .............................................................................2
Colours for Greek Temples........................................................4
Numa Pompilius ...................................................................5
Agrigent, Sicily..........................................................................8
Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi..........................................9
Sifnian treasury, Delphi............................................................11
Athena-Aphaia Temple at Aegina............................................12
Polychrome Art in ancient Greece...........................................16
Acropolis Athens......................................................................18
Reconstruction of the Parthenon.........................................19
Red & Blue in Roman Temples...............................................21
Ornamental Colours............................................................21
Augustus of Prima Porta..........................................................23
Peplos Kore (with traces of colour).........................................25
The Nikolai-church at Stralsund..............................................27
Basilica of Saint Servatius, Maastricht....................................28
Nefertiti bust ...........................................................................29
The Antipodes Red & Blue......................................................30
The sun and the moon.........................................................30
Sexual Organs.....................................................................31
The Rainbow.......................................................................31
Conclusion...............................................................................32

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