The Importance of Colour On Ancient Marb

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 eyela-
shes, 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 clas-
sical sculpture to surprise or shock the public, and the continuing need to inte-
grate colour properly into the classical aesthetic. Winckelmann’s 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 art-
historical 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 stone’s 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 0141–6790 . VOL 32 NO 3 . JUNE 2009 pp 427-457
& Association of Art Historians 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 427
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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 under-
standing 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 find-
ings from Archaic and Classical Greek and
2 Head of an Amazon, from a life-size statue Hellenistic periods, this study will concen-
discovered 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 under-
neum: Antiquarium, SAP 8702. Photo: represented in this field.5 The recent
Riccardo Giordano/ Herculaneum Conser- exhibitions of painted Greek and Roman
vation Project. Published with the kind casts at more than ten international
permission of the Soprintendenza Speciale venues and the publication of Brinkmann’s
per i Beni Culturali di Napoli e Pompei - key study Die Polychromie der archaischen und
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. fr.
uhklassischen Skulptur (2003) make this an
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
Trajan’s 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 indi-
vidual 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 trompe-
l’oeil. 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 under-
standing and interpretation of this key piece of Roman art.
428 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009

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, 2002–3. 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 supple-
mentary 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 sculp-
ture, 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
& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 429

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 antiquity’s wooden statues, now almost entirely lost

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 sculp-
ture 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) regu-
larly 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, addi-
tions to this list was the sculptural
relief of the Parthenon, the subject
of heated controversy throughout
the nineteenth century owing to a 6 Painted plaster reconstruction of the ‘Peplos Kore’,
series of bold interpretations and c. 530 BCE (1975, repainted 1996). Cambridge: The
garish reconstructions (plate 5), Museum of Classical Archaeology (inv. 34a). Photo:
and in the 1930s for the rigorous The Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge.

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
7 Detail from the colour rendering of the never failed to provoke a reaction from
‘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.
of a Persian fighter. Photo: F. Winter, Der Among other important pieces of
Alexandersarkophag aus Sidon, 1912, Strassburg. Archaic sculpture, the frieze of the
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 Clas-
sical: 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 pedi-
mental 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

8 (left) The head of Caligula, c. CE 37–41, 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 Trajan’s 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 scene’s iconography could be picked out, and
Mithras’ face was sometimes gilded as he stared back towards the sun (see plate 10).

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 collabora-
tive 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 Østergaard, Curator of Ancient Art at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
has established the interdisciplinary ‘Copenhagen Polychromy Network Project’
(2008–10) in order to analyse a representative selection of classical sculptures in
the Glyptotek with a view to identifying pigment traces and attempting recon-
structive 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

subtle and muted pigments –

and indeed there is some
evidence that Classical Greek,
Hellenistic and Roman sculp-
ture 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 fifth-
century BCE figure of the
archer (identified as Paris) from
the pediment of the temple of
Aphaia at Aegina – one of the
highlights of Brinkmann’s
reconstructive work – was
brightly painted precisely so
that it could be picked out
from a distance against the
blue background of the pedi-
ment, and not at eye level as it
was presented in recent exhi-
bitions34 (plate 11). The pedi-
ment sculptures of the temple
of Zeus at Olympia were
also vividly painted to increase
their visibility.35 Black under-
coating 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 11 Painted model of the archer from the west pediment
north and south sides of the of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, inserted into its
frieze.36 It has also been pedimental context in order to demonstrate the impor-
observed that pedimental tance of colour and colour contrast for visibility.
sculptures on tall buildings Munich: Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek.
were coloured more brightly Photo: Vinzenz Brinkmann.

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 Trajan’s 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 son’s 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 super-

human 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 poet’s language captures the effects of clarity and luminosity (clar-
aque 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 (12.64–69). 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 viewer’s 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

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 (exaleiphtheis’hōs agalma), and made plain instead of beautiful:
the Euripidean metaphor suggests a figure in the round that had been embel-
lished 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 materi-
ality) is neatly demonstrated by this discussion of the final stages in the
preparation of the ‘ideal’ statue. Here, Lucian’s statue is complete, all except for
the finish (Imagines 7–8):
[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 (grapsatō)
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 ‘bright-
armed’ and ‘rosy-fingered’ . . .
Lucian’s 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 Lucian’s exploitation of the
colour clichés 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 statue’s dedication. In the Catalepton,
the poet promises Venus, if she will let him finish his Trojan epic not just incense

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 sophisti-
cated 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 spec-
ularis).56 ‘Finishing’ the artistic medium, then, was a highly complex technical
process which highlighted and enhanced the underlying material.

What is needed, then, is a more

sophisticated understanding of the rela-
tionship between ‘colour’ and ‘material’:
one must avoid the assumption that
colour was applied in a way that disre-
garded the underlying material.57 The
sophisticated polishes and patinas docu-
mented 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 recon-
structions. The Prima Porta Augustus,
unlike its painted plaster cast, was carved
out of an expensive block of Parian lych-
nites, and must have integrated colours
into its translucent surfaces so that the
marble’s special properties were comple-
mented by the pigments that brought it
‘to life’ (see below pp. 447–50). Although
Carrara rather than Parian, the painted
marble replica of the Ny Carlsberg Glyp-
totek 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, 1851–1856. 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

‘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 zōa 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 (technē) carried imitation (mimēsis) 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 prosēkonta) 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 contem-
porary 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 chrōma).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 Plato’s analogy between the painting of a statue and the organi-
zation 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

colours with the categories of poetic

ekphrasis was also a central concern
of Lucian’s account of the painting of
the ‘ideal statue’ at Imagines 7–8
(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 four-
colour 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 victor’s fillet, c. CE 20. Munich: Staatliche
‘imitator’ (mimētēs), 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 people’s 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 some-
times 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

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 rein-
force) 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 Walter-
Karydi that coloristic effects were what really mattered in painting sculpture.77
It also differs from Valentina Manzelli’s 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 interpreta-
tion 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 Greco-
Roman 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 (Diana’s scarlet buskins, for example, or Cupid’s
thousand-coloured quiver), special uses of pigments, or to an artist’s unusual
attention to this particular aspect of sculpting (Pliny on Praxiteles), but the
customary colouring of sculptural features rarely elicited comment. Further-
more, 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 (chrōma 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-l’oeil (‘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

with the living and sharing their iconography, values and history. The possibi-
lities, 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 sculp-
ture.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 illu-
sionism 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 repre-
sentations 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

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
55–79). Naples: Museo Archeologico Nazionale (inv. 9018). Photo: Soprain-
tendenza 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.
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 be-
tween 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 stand-
ing in proxy for the gods who were
supposed to live there, and it is unsur-
prising to find that literary accounts
frequently elide the distinction be-
tween 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. 360–350 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 column-
krater (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 straightfor-
wardly ‘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 addi-
tion, 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

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 evoca-
tively 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
painter’s skill by treating the image of the sculpture as an image of the goddess
herself—‘the 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 nego-
tiating 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
emperor’s body.98 In addition, Indian, ancient Near-Eastern and Egyptian sculp-
tures 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 influ-
enced a wide variety of medieval and modern art and architecture, in Europe and
beyond. Even the leading Renaissance sculptors who are credited with estab-
lishing an aesthetic of monochrome sculpture sometimes produced polychrome
pieces: Michelangelo, for example, produced Crucifix (Florence: Santo Spirito,
1492–94), 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 Bernini’s celebrated marble and travertine

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (1648–51) 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 Collodi’s 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 psycho-
logical 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 privi-
leged 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 historian’s 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.

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 emperor’s 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 emperor’s 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 Porta’s 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 Livia’s 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

of the emperor’s 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
statue’s 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 scepti-
cism.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 statue’s 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 emperor’s 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 general’s
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 emperor’s 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 viewer’s 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

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
barbarian’s 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 sculpture’s 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 Rome’s 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 statue’s 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 Livia’s 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 Østergaard 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.

1 The Amazon head, discovered during the work Polychromie der archaischen und fru. hklassischen
of the Herculaneum Conservation Project Skulpturen, Munich, 2003; see also Ridgway,
(British School at Rome/Soprintendenza Prayers in Stone, esp. 104–5; 110–14. My forth-
Archeologica di Pompeii/Packard Humanities coming monograph Colour and Meaning in
Institute), is now on display in the Museo Ancient Rome discusses literary and philoso-
Nazionale at Naples. The discovery was phical aspects of colour usage in early imperial
reported in The Times (25 March 2006 as ‘Statue Rome.
reveals Roman lady with her make-up still on’ 6 For a full nineteenth- and twentieth-century
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509- bibliography on the subject, see Ridgway,
2102022,00.html, accessed October 2008). The Prayers in Stone, 103–7 and Brinkmann,
initial exhibitions of painted casts were: Bunte ‘Research in the polychromy of ancient sculp-
Götter (Munich Staatliche Antikensammlung ture’.
und Glyptothek, 2003–2004); I colori del bianco 7 So Olga Palagia, ed., Greek Sculpture: Function,
(Vatican Museums, Rome, 2004); ClassiColor Materials and Techniques in the Archaic and Clas-
(Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, 2004). sical Periods, Cambridge, 2006, 261 and 275 n.
Versions of the display have also been exhibited 82.
in Basel, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Athens, 8 Blue pigment was normally used for back-
Hamburg and Frankfurt, and in America as grounds, perhaps (it has been suggested) in
Gods in Color (Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 2007– imitation of the sky: for examples and discus-
8) and part of The Color of Life exhibition (J. Paul sion, see Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, esp. 110–11;
Getty Museum, 2008). This truly international Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 275 n. 83; Walter-
initiative was the first major exhibition of Karydi, ‘The coloring of the relief background
sculptural polychromy in over a century. An in Archaic and Classical Greek sculpture’, in
important symposium, ‘Rediscovering color: Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Gods in Color, 172–7.
new perspectives on polychrome sculpture’, 9 Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 261–2 for examples. See
was held at the J. Paul Getty Museum at Malibu also Pausanias 10.14.4; 18.7. Further on gilding,
in May 2008. On the Winckelmann aesthetic, see Patrik Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie
see Antonio Pinelli, ‘Winckelmann e il der Plastik: Griechenland und Rom, Stockholm,
problema del bianco’, Archeo Dossier, 29, 1987, 1960, 245–7, who connects the practice in
21–4; Miranda Marvin, The language of the Muses: particular to the Hellenistic ruler cult and
the dialogue between Greek and Roman sculpture, associates it in particular with mid- and late-
Los Angeles, 2008, c. 6. imperial Roman sculpture; Arnold Lawrence,
2 One significant exception is Brunilde Ridg- Greek and Roman Sculpture, London, 1972, 34–5.
way’s essay ‘How: the role of color’ in Prayers in Brigitte Bourgeois and Philippe Jockey, ‘La
Stone: Greek Architectural Sculpture ca. 600–100 B.C., dorure des marbres grecs: nouvelle enquête sur
Berkeley, 1999, 103–42. la sculpture hellénistique de Délos’, Journal des
3 On the choice, colour and associations of Savants, 2005, 253–316. For more detail on
marbles for ancient sculpture, see Rolf metal attachments, see Ridgway, ‘Metal
Schneider, Bunte Barbaren, Worms, 1986; attachments in Greek marble sculpture’, in
Marilda De Nuccio and Lucrezia Ungaro, eds, I Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on
marmi colorati della Roma imperiale (Exhibition Ancient Sculpture, Malibu, 1990.
Catalogue), Rome, 2002; Mark Bradley, ‘Colour 10 For examples, see also Claude Rolley, La sculp-
and marble in early imperial Rome’, Proceedings ture grecque (Vol. 1: Des origines au milieu du Ve
of the Cambridge Philological Society, 52, 2002, siècle), Paris, 1994, 78–81; Palagia, Greek Sculp-
1–22. ture, 262; on inlaid eyes in bronze statues, see
4 On modern techniques for pigment identifica- Carol Mattusch, Classical Bronzes: The ARt and
tion and reconstruction, see esp. Vinzenz Craft of Greek and Roman Statuary, Ithaca and
Brinkmann, ‘Research in the polychromy of London, 1996, 24 and n. 26 for references. From
ancient sculpture: introduction to the exhibi- the principate of Hadrian onwards, the iris,
tion’, in Vinzenz Brinkmann and Raimund pupil and eyebrows were usually carved
.
Wunsche, eds, Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of directly on to the stone, perhaps to provide
Classical Antiquity, Munich, 2007, 20–7. For the clearer guidelines for the painter.
potential of electronic databases, see Valentina 11 See n. 3. Cf. also Pliny, Natural History 35.3 on
Manzelli, La policromia nella statuaria greca the practice under Nero, called lapidem pingere,
arcaica, Rome, 1994; cf. Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, of further embellishing coloured marbles by
104–5. painting on additional colours and patterns:
5 Most of the work focuses on the Archaic period, on this, see Bradley, Colour and Meaning,
for which the clearest evidence survives: so Cambridge, 2009, c. 3.
Elena Walter-Karydi, ‘Prinzipien der arch- 12 So Bernard Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor in
aischen Farbgebung’, in Karin Braun and A. Classical Greece, New York, 1972, 60 on the
Furtw.angler, eds, Studien zur klassischen Arch- temple of Zeus at Olympia. Cf. also Rolley, La
.
ologie: Festschrift F. Hiller, Saarbrucken, 1986, sculpture grecque, 82 and Brinkmann, ‘The
23–37; Manzelli, La policromia; Brinkmann, Die funerary monument of Aristion’, in Brink-

mann and Wunsche, . Gods in Color, 60–5; Temple’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Gods in
Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 113 on the Siphnian Color, 70–97. Many of these colour traces faded
Treasury at Delphi. rapidly on contact with the air.
13 So Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, 33–4. 24 For details and references, see Palagia, Greek
14 See Brinkmann, ‘Farbigkeit der Terrakotten’, in Sculpture, esp. n. 82 on further recent evidence
Friedrich Hamdorf, ed., Hauch des Prometheus: for painted marbles.
Meisterwerke in Ton, Munich, 1996, 25–30. 25 On this piece as symptomatic of a fourth-
15 On bronze statuary, see Hermann Born, ‘Multi- century BC development towards a more
coloured antique bronze statues’, in Susan La sophisticated palette and a broader cultural
Niece and Paul Craddock, eds, Metal Plating and sensitivity to colours in general see Rolley, La
Patination: Cultural, Technical and Historical Devel- sculpture grecque, 82; Ridgway, Prayers in Stone,
opments, Oxford, 1993, 19–29; Mattusch, ‘Clas- 122–3; Rouveret, ‘Les yeux pourpres: l’expéri-
sical bronzes’, 24–30; id. (2003) in Brinkmann ence de la couleur dans la peinture classique
.
and Wunsche, eds, Bunte Götter: die Farbigkeit entre realité et fiction’, in Rouveret et al.,
antiker Skulptur, Munich, 2003, 126–31. See also Couleurs et matières, 17–28, esp. 17–24; Brécou-
Sophie Descamps-Lequime, ‘La polychromie des laki (2006). Further on this idea, see Brink-
bronzes grecs et romains’ and Marion Muller- mann, ‘The blue eyes of the Persians: the
Dufeu, ‘Les couleurs du bronze dans les statues colored sculpture of the time of Alexander and
grecques d’après les descriptions antiques’, in the Hellenistic period’, in Brinkmann and
Agnès Rouveret et al., eds, Couleurs et matières .
Wunsche, Gods in Color, 150–67 and Heinrich
dans l’antiquité: texts, techniques et pratiques, Paris, Piening, in Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Gods in
2006, 79–102, on ancient artistic mimesis Color, 168–71.
concerned with variegated bronze statues. 26 The most important study in the twentieth
16 For a good summary of classical and post-clas- century was Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Poly-
sical chryselephantine sculpture (including chromie, esp. 181–242, who argued for signifi-
Egyptian and ancient Near-Eastern ivories), see cant continuities between sculptures in the
Kenneth Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Hellenistic East and those in early imperial
Ancient Mediterranean World, Oxford, 2001, esp. Rome. For an excellent recent summary, see
19–20. Cf. Pausanias 7.26.4: on ivory ‘decorated Jan Østergaard, ‘Emerging colors: Roman
on the surface with gold and colours’. Cf. also sculptural polychromy revived’, in Roberta
Carolyn Connor, The Color of Ivory: Polychromy on Panzanelli, ed., The Color of Life: Polychromy in
Byzantine Ivories, Princeton, 1998, esp. c. 3 ‘The Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present, Los
ancient tradition of polychrome ivories’. Angeles, 2008, 40–61. On a statue of Trajan
with a star-studded mantle, see Brigitte Freyer-
17 On evidence for the gilding and colouring
Schauenburg, ‘Der Sternenmantel des Kaisers
of wood, see Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary,
Trajan’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Bunte
19–20.
Götter, 212–15; on painted decorative features
18 See Hermann Phelps, Die farbige Architektur bei in the Aula del Colosso in the Forum of
den Römern und in Mittelalter, Berlin, 1930. Augustus, see Lucrecia Ungaro and Maria Luisa
19 The limitations of current knowledge about Vitali, ‘Die bemalte Wandverkleidung der
ancient sculptural pigments are summarized ‘‘Aula del Colosso’’ im Augustforum’, in Brink-
well by Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 107–8. mann and Wunsche,. Bunte Götter, 216–18.
20 See Ian Jenkins, ed., Cleaning and Controversy: The Under raking light, faint traces of paint have
Cleaning of the Parthenon Sculptures 1811–1939 (BM been detected on the Laocoon sculpture; see
Occasional Paper 146), London, 2001; Ridgway, Bernard Andreae, Laokoon und die Grundung
Prayers in Stone, 115–18. For a detailed account Roms, Mainz, 1988, esp. plates 13 and 40.
of the tests, see Ian Jenkins and Andrew 27 For references and discussion, see pp. 34–41.
Middleton, ‘Paint on the Parthenon sculp- 28 On the Copenhagen Caligula, see Jan Øster-
tures’, Annual of the British School at Athens, 83, gaard, ‘Caligula in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
1988, 183–207. Copenhagen: reconstructing the polychromy of
21 For discussion and references, see Brinkmann, a Roman portrait’, in Brinkmann and
‘Girl or goddess? The riddle of the ‘‘Peplos .
Wunsche, Gods in Color, 178–83; Heike Stege et
Kore’’ from the Athenian Acropolis’, in Brink- al., ‘Pigment and binding medium analysis of
.
mann and Wunsche, Gods in Color, 44–53. the polychrome treatment of the marble bust
22 Brinkmann, Die Friese des Siphnierschatzhauses, of a Roman portrait’, in Brinkmann and
Munich, 1994; see also Brinkmann ‘The .
Wunsche, Gods in Color, 184–5; Brinkmann et
weighing of the souls: painted names on the al., ‘The coloration of the Caligula portrait’, in
‘‘Siphnian Treasury’’’, in Brinkmann and .
Brinkmann and Wunsche, Gods in Color, 186–91.
.
Wunsche, Gods in Color, 54–9. 29 Most recently, see M. Del Monte et al., Traces of
23 On these and other early discoveries, see ancient colours on Trajan’s column’, Archaeo-
Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 105–6; Brinkmann, metry, 40: 2, 1998, 403–12.
‘The prince and the goddess: the rediscovered 30 See Dyfri Williams et al., ‘A virtual Parthenon
color on the pediment statues of the Aphaia metope: restoration and colour’, in Brinkmann

.
and Wunsche, Gods in Color, 112–17. Further- Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Bunte Götter, figs. 12,
more, Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians 21 vs. 19–20.
University, Munich) is undertaking a syste- 40 Virgil, Aeneid 1.586–93.
matic project to collect literary resources for 41 This passage imitates Homer, Odyssey 23.156–
polychrome sculpture. 63, where Athene imbues Odysseus with divine
31 Although one must expect a certain margin of beauty, although this simile is restricted to the
error in these reconstructions: Brinkmann and gilding of silver and there is no mention of the
.
Wunsche, Bunte Götter, figs 158a–b, 177–8, 242 adornment of ivory or marble.
and 247 show different reconstructions of the 42 Euripides, Helen 262–3. For an excellent inter-
same sculpture. pretation of sculptural imagery in this play, see
32 For resistance to the intense colours of the Deborah Steiner, Images in Mind: Statues in
recent exhibitions, see the responses to Mary Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought,
Beard’s blog entry ‘Were ancient statues Princeton, 2002, 54–6, esp. n. 155 where she
painted?’ (December 2007) http://timesonline. examines the meaning of these lines.
typepad.com/dons_life/2007/12/were-ancient-st.
43 On Lucian’s subversion of the traditional
html (accessed November 2008). On develop-
philosophical doctrines about sight and
ments in sculptural polychromy between the
knowedge, see Isabelle Gassino, ‘Voir et savoir:
Archaic and the Classical periods see Ridgway,
les difficultés de la connaissance chez Lucien’,
Prayers in Stone, 114; between the Classical
in Laurence Villard, ed., Couleurs et vision dans
and Hellenistic/Roman periods, Reutersw.ard,
l’antiquité classique, Rouen, 2002, 167–77. I have
Studien zur Polychromie, esp. 181–242.
also discussed this passage in Bradley, ‘Colour
33 Brinkmann, ‘The coloring of Archaic and early and marble’, 17–18.
Classical sculpture’, in Brinkmann and
44 See Brinkmann, ‘Armor on the naked skin? The
.
Wunsche, Gods in Color, 28–43. So also Ridgway,
early Classical ‘‘Cuirass-Torso’’ from the Athe-
Prayers in Stone, 103–4.
nian Acropolis’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche, .
34 See Brinkmann, ‘The prince and the goddess’, Gods in Color, 100–5 on a Classical torso in the
in Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Gods in Color, Acropolis Museum at Athens (inv. 599), where
70–97. paint alone distinguishes a muscled cuirass
35 Georg Treu, ‘Die technische Herstellung und from a muscled body.
Bemalung der Giebelgruppen am olympischen 45 [Virgil], Catalepton 14.9–10. Mille colores marked
Zeustempel’, Jahrbuch des kaiserlich Deutschen
out its subject matter as divinely imbued: see
Archaeologischen Instituts, 10, 1895, 1–35, esp. 25–
Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 1.
35; cf. Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 83 on the use
46 Brinkmann, ‘Archaic and early Classical sculp-
of blue–red contrasts here; cf. Ridgway, Prayers
ture’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Gods in
in Stone, 114–15.
Color, 28–43. So also Ridgway, Prayers in Stone,
36 As Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 117–18. Cf. Rolley,
103–4. Theophrastus, De lapidibus and Pliny the
La sculpture grecque, 83 on light and dark
Elder, Natural History book 35 devote no small
materials on the Erechtheum. The use of dark
space to identifying and evaluating the
limestone for visual contrast in Greek archi-
production and economy of individual
tecture has been explored by Lucy Shoe, ‘Dark
pigments. On shared knowledge and apprecia-
stone in Greek architecture’, Hesperia Supple-
tion of marble types among the educated
ments, vol. 8, 1949, 341–482.
metropolitan elite of early imperial Rome, see
37 Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, 34. Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’.
Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 126–7 suggests that
47 For several early modern analogies for such
the use of colours on architectural back-
artistic collaboration, see p. 33. Cf. Palagia,
grounds may have been influenced by the stage
Greek sculpture, 260–1 on rasps, incisions and
sets of the ancient theatre.
contours applied to the stone by the sculptor to
38 So Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor, 26. This is
assist the work of the painter.
also the line adopted by Ridgway, Prayers in
Stone, 113–14, who argues that colours in the 48 Pliny, Natural History 35.133.
Archaic period ‘are not meant to reflect nature 49 Plutarch, De Gloria Atheniensium 6.438E (agal-
but to provide contrast and legibility’. Cf. matōn egkaustai kai chrusōtai kai bapheis).
Jeremy Tanner, ‘Nature, culture and the body 50 Inscriptiones Italiae 13.2 p. 205, 42, 13; Corpus
in Classical Greek religious art’, World Archae- Inscriptionum Latinarum 6.7885 (politor eburarius);
ology 33 (‘Archaeology and Aesthetics’), 2001, 6.9462a; 6.9820 6.34374a; 6.37818; 10.6638 C 2,
257–76, esp. 260 on cultural relativism in 17; cf. Firmicus Maternus 4.14.20.
naturalistic perceptions of the world. 51 For all references, see the Thesaurus Linguae
39 One should also consider the type of back- Latinae s.v. ‘polior’, ‘politor’, ‘politio’, ‘politus’.
ground against which a statue would be Festus P.71M claims that all ancient accom-
viewed: the painted backdrop of a Pompeian plishments are called ‘politiones’. For polished
house, for example, would make these figures sculpture, see Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.1451;
far less startling than (for example) the neutral Pliny, Natural History 36.52; 36.54; 36.152;
background of the Munich Glyptothek. See Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4.32.2; Ammianus

Marcellinus 16.10.8; Prudentius, Contra Symma- 61 So John Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Late
chum 1.348; Varro, De re rustica 1.2.10; Cicero, Ad Classical Period and Sculpture in Colonies and
Quintum fratrem 3.1.1; Corpus Inscriptionum Lati- Overseas, London, 1995, 11–12; cf. Stewart,
narum 1.3025 [Ostia, first century BCE] Statues in Roman Society, 93 on the painting of
‘portic(um) poliend(am). . .curauit’; Vitruvius 7.1.4. statues to imitate life. On the ambiguity of
52 For the aesthetic transformation of polished religious statuary, see Richard Gordon, ‘The
marbles, see Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’, 5–8, real and the imaginary: production and reli-
16–18. gion in the Graeco-Roman world’, Art History, 2,
53 For example, Brinkmann in Brinkmann and 1979, 5–34, esp. 9–10 on the ambiguity of the
.
Wunsche, Bunte Götter, 40. Multiple layers of language in which ancient statuary was
colour have been detected on the stele of Aris- described. For zōon see Herodotus 3.88; Plato,
togeiton and on the fringes of the Prima Porta Republic 515a. For spirantia signa see Virgil,
statue. Repainting perhaps also assisted in the Georgics 3.34; Aeneid 6.847; Arnobius 6.16; cf.
reuse of marble spolia for new sculptural Martial 7.84.2 (spirat et arguta picta tabella manu);
programmes, by smoothing over joins and Propertius 2.31.7 on Myron’s statue group:
permitting the expression of new features: e.g. quattuor artifices, uiuida signa, boues.
the Hadrianic roundels of the Arch of 62 Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor, 65.
Constantine. For evidence of cleaning and
63 Kallistratos, Imagines 2.4.
treating, see Inscriptiones Graecae 4.840; Pliny,
Natural History 34.99; Pausanias 1.15.4; cf. 64 Plato, Republic 4.420C.
Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis 395.2–4. 65 For references and discussion of colour in
54 On ‘ganosis’, see Vitruvius 7.9.3–4; Pliny, Greek art within a philosophical context, see
Natural History 33.122; Plutarch, Natural Ques- Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 2. Cf. Rouveret et
tions 287D; Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, al., Couleurs et matières, for essays exploring
35–6; Manzelli, La policromia, 101–15, 278; various aspects of colour in artistic ekphrasis.
Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 82; Palagia, Greek 66 So Ion of Chios (at Ath. 13.603E). Further on
Sculpture, 260–1. For a concise survey of the this poetic–artistic distinction, see James (1995)
surface finishing of Greek statues, see Andrew 62–3.
Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration, New 67 Further on this passage, see Rouveret, ‘Les yeux
Haven, 1990, 40–2. See also John Pollini et al., pourpres’, 23. This idea recurs in Plato at
Parian lychnites and the Prima Porta statue: new Republic 2.377E; 586B-C; cf. Cratylus 424E–425B.
scientific tests and the symbolic value of the 68 On this idea, see Philostratus, Imagines 1.2; cf.
marble’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 11, 1998, Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales 725C.
275–84 on the Prima Porta Augustus.
69 On the four-colour palette, see Bradley, Colour
55 Plutarch, Moralia 74E. and Meaning, c. 2; Charikleia Brécoulaki,
56 This passage is discussed in detail in Ernst ‘Considérations sur les peintres tétra-
Gombrich, ‘Dark varnishes, variations on a chromatistes et les couleurs austeri et floridi’, in
theme from Pliny’, Burlington Magazine, 104, Rouveret et al., Couleurs et matières, 29–42.
1962, 51–5. Cf. Vitruvius 7.7.1 on sil (a form of
70 See for example Stewart, Statues in Roman
‘yellow’ earth), regularly used for the politio of
Society, 247. Cf. Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Poly-
Greco-Roman sculpture.
chromie, 245–7.
57 On the importance of the aesthetics of the
71 So Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales 5.1.2 (with
underlying stone even when it was painted, see
Boardman, Greek Sculpture, 12) on the use of
Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’, esp. 10–11. On
silvered bronze to express the wasting expres-
Praxiteles as a pioneer for the use of white
marble for female nudes, see Boardman, Greek sion of a dying Jocasta. The hair of bronze
Sculpture, 13. See Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Poly- heads was often darkened with pigments.
chromie, 242–3 on subtle techniques for sculp- 72 For discussion and further references, see
tural skin-toning using wax coatings. Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 80–1.
58 I thank Jan Østergaard for drawing my atten- 73 Mattusch, Classical bronzes, 24–30 provides a
tion to these possibilities. On the encaustic good outline of the various effects of bronze
technique, see Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 261. sculpture. Cf. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes 28.3
59 See Elizabeth Eastlake, The Life of John Gibson, comparing a boxer’s skin-colour to that of well-
R.A., Sculptor, London, 1870, 212; also on the blended bronze. Pliny, Natural History 34.98 on
Tinted Venus, see Panzanelli, Color of Life, 164. a bronze alloy mixed with Cypriot copper to
For other examples of nineteenth-century render purple borders on the robes of statues.
reconstructions, see Wunsche . (2004) in Cf. 34.140 on bronze imbued with rusting iron
Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Bunte Götter, 10–23, to create the effect of shame.
esp. figs 4, 7–10. 74 On models in clay, plaster, wax and wood, see
60 A contrast observed by Peter Stewart, Statues in Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 262–3. Pliny, Natural
Roman Society: Representation and Response, History 35.153 discusses the sculptor Lysistratos’
Oxford, 2003, 37, and Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, creation of ‘life masks’ in plaster for the
103–4. production of bronze portraits. He goes on

(155–6) to describe plaster models used for 90 The provocative ambiguity of Greco-Roman
Roman statuary. cult statues has been comprehensively
75 See David Wiles, Masks of Menander: Sign and explored by Gordon, ‘The real and the
Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance, imaginary’; for the relationship between
Cambridge, 1991, esp. 74–80, 129–49 on recog- naturalism and culture in Archaic and Clas-
nized typologies of dramatic masks based on sical Greek cult statuary, see Tanner, ‘Nature,
schematic hair and skin colours. On colour- culture and the body’; on Roman cult statues,
coding in physiognomy and its relationship to see Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, c. 6.; Jas
theatre masks, see Bradley, Colour and Meaning, Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in
c. 5. Art and Text, Princeton, 2007, 247–51.
76 See Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 83 and Ridgway, Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, 243 argues
Prayers in Stone, 285–90 on painted Archaic that cult statues (as distinct from ‘decorative’
statues) present the most intense and unam-
fragments in the Persian depot on the Acro-
biguous instances of sculptural polychromy.
polis; id. (1999) 110 on gendered skin tones on
the Lefkadia Kentauromachy; id. 122 on racial 91 See Gordon, ‘The real and the imaginary’;
skin tones on the ‘Alexander Sarcophagus’. Tanner, ‘Nature, culture and the body’, esp.
262–3. Cf. Vitruvius 4.5.1; 4.9 on cult statues
77 Walter-Karydi, ‘Prinzipien der archaischen
gazing back at those who make vows and
Farbgebung’, esp. 31, 37. Cf. Ridgway, Prayers in
sacrifice; Pliny, Natural History 36.13 on the
Stone, 125 on early Greek sculpture.
statue of Artemis on Chios, which appeared to
78 Manzelli, La policromia, 33–90. visitors to change its expression; cf. Pausanias
79 Gordon, ‘The real and the imaginary’, esp. 9–10. 8.37.7 (with Elsner, Roman Eyes, 289) on mirrors
80 This idea of colour as ‘skin’ is explicitly outside temple doors creating ambiguous
formulated, for example, at Aristotle, De Sensu reflections of cult images.
439a6–440b25 and in Lucretius’ Epicurean 92 On this image, see Rolley, La sculpture grecque,
optics: De rerum natura esp. 4.74–97. The rami- 82. Cf. Mattusch, Classical Bronzes, 24 on an early
fications this theory holds for broader issues fourth-century BCE vase fragment depicting a
and cultural differences in colour perception life-like bronze cult-statue of Apollo inside a
are explored in Bradley, Colour and Meaning, Doric temple, while the real Apollo sits outside.
esp. c. 2. On the representation of statues on vases, see
81 Finished statues and classical trompe-l’oeil are Monica De Cesare, Statue in immagine: studi sulle
discussed by Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, raffigurazioni di statue nella pittura vascolare greca,
36–7 and 148–54. Roma, 1997.
82 On Roman statues in wall-paintings, see 93 See for example the gilded face of Mithras
Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, esp. 182, Tauroctonos (fig. 7). Further on the radiant
242; Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, 214–21. glow of cult images (alongside other visual,
The most thorough and comprehensive study auditory and olfactory sensations), see Gordon,
remains Eric Moormann, La pittura parietale ‘The real and the imaginary’, 13; Tanner,
romana come fonte di conoscenza per la scultura ‘Nature, culture and the body’, 262. Tanner
antica, Assen/Maastricht, 1988, which catalo- argues that the detached and unnaturalistic
gued nearly 350 examples of representations of appearance of Archaic Athenian cult statuary
sculpture in Roman wall-paintings. (e.g. Archaic korai) ‘served primarily the status
83 On colour, garden statues and trompe-l’oeil, see interests of an aristocratic élite’ and that this
Reutersw.ard, Studien zur Polychromie, 207, 243. gave way to the naturalism of Classical statuary
as an artistic expression of the openness,
84 Reviews of Moormann, La pittura parietale have
interaction and accessibility that was conco-
particularly focused on this difficult question.
mitant with democratic culture; it would not
85 This image is discussed in detail by Stewart,
be difficult to insert shifts in the naturalism of
Statues in Roman Society, 38–40.
sculptural polychromy into this argument
86 .
Cf. Andreas Gruner, Venus ordinis. Der Wandel von (although Tanner does not attempt to do so).
Malerei und Literatur im Zeitalter der römischen 94 So Elsner, ‘Cult and sculpture: sacrifice in the
B.urgerkriege, Paderborn, 2004, 199, 203–4 on Ara Pacis Augustae’, Journal of Roman Studies, 81,
lifelike caryatids in Augustan paintings, 1991, 50–61., esp. 51 on the necessity for
supporting a highly unrealistic entablature. ‘additional, creative and subversive interpreta-
87 Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, 40; cf. 221. tions which images evoke in different viewers
88 For example, Moormann, La pittura parietale, and at different times’. That meaning is always
cat. 217/19 on white pigment used to identify a realized at the point of reception is also the
silver statue of Aphrodite in the House of the line adopted by Marvin, The Language of the
Vettii at Pompeii. Muses, esp. c. 9 ‘Roman ideal sculpture’.
89 That said, Vitruvius, De architectura 7.5.3 95 On Hephaestus, see Homer, Iliad 18.373–9,
complains about the disintegration of ‘ratio 417–21. On Daedalus, Marion Muller-Dufeu, ed.,
ueritatis’ in contemporary painting. See also La sculpture grecque: sources littéraires et épigra-
.
Gruner, Venus ordinis, 53. phiques, Paris, 2002, nos 80–150.

96 This story is memorably described at Ovid, mentions colour only in passing; cf. Walter
Metamorphoses 10.243–97, where the poet play- Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen
fully toys with the materiality of the statue and Museum, Berlin, 1903, 19–20; Reutersw.ard,
its strikingly lifelike appearance. Cf. Pliny, Studien zur Polychromie, 212–16, 244; Paolo
Natural History 36.21 on Praxiteles’ cult statue Liverani, ‘L’Augusto di Prima Porta’, in Anna
of Aphrodite of Knidos. Further on ‘agalmato- Gramiccia, ed., I colori del bianco, Rome, 2004,
philia’, see Steiner, Images in Mind, 185–250; 235–42.
Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, esp. 264–7. 105 See Brinkmann and Wunsche, . Bunte Götter, 24,
97 For the exhibition catalogue, see Panzanelli, fig. 22.
Color of Life. 106 Unfortunately, its precise location within the
98 Jane Portal et al., eds, The First Emperor: China’s villa is not known. A base discovered near the
Terracotta Army, London, 2007, esp. 172–4. atrium wall may have served as a suitable
99 See for example Om P. Agrawal, ‘A study of statue base: see Allan Klyne and Peter Liljen-
Indian polychrome wooden sculpture’, Studies stolpe, ‘Where to put Augustus? A note on the
in Conservation, 16, 1971, 56–68. The iconic bust placement of the Prima Porta statue’, American
of Nefertiti now in the Egyptian Museum at Journal of Philology, 121, 2000, 121–8.
Berlin is one striking example of artistic 107 Tanner’s argument (‘Nature, culture and the
mimesis in Pharaonic sculpture. For general body’, 265) that detached sculptural form in
discussion, see Donald Wilber, ‘The role of Archaic cult statuary alluded to a ‘commit-
color in architecture’, The Journal of the American ment to an elite self-identity as theoeides,
Society of Architectural Historians, 2, 1942, 17–22. godlike, while engendering a feeling of awe
One might also compare ancient Mayan and deference towards the aristocratic élite on
painted stucco sculptures and ceramics. the part of the demos’ might also be applied to
100 Donatello’s ‘St John the Baptist’ (1438) and the ‘super-human’ appearance of the Prima
‘Mary Magdalen’ (c. 1455), for example, both Porta Augustus (and similar Roman statuary),
employ elaborate paint and gilding on a although the politics of viewing are likely to
wooden base. Cf. also Claus Sluter’s ‘Well of have been very different.
Moses’ (1396–1406) at Champmol, painted by
108 The pigments may originally have been
Jean Malouel (court painter to the Burgundian
subdued by other colours or finishes, but
dukes) and gilded by Hermann of Cologne – see
evidence has disappeared. It is possible that the
S. Nash, ‘Claus Sluter’s ‘‘Well of Moses’’ for the
red pigmentation may have been a base for
Chartreuse de Champmol Reconsidered’
gilding, which was not uncommon on divine
(published as three parts in The Burlington
Magazine, 2005, 2006 and 2008); Gregor Erhart’s and heroic statuary. On the various possibi-
‘Vanitas’ group (c. 1500), painted by Hans lities of red imprints on marble surfaces, see
Holbein the Elder. Further, see Ned Denny, ed., Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 107.
Wonder: Painted Sculpture from Medieval England, 109 Suetonius, Augustus 79. On blond hair on
Leeds, 2002. For an example of painted baroque Augustan heroes and divinities, see Ovid,
sculpture, see El Greco (c. 1600) Epimetheus and Amores 1.15–35 (Apollo); Metamorphoses 6.118
Pandora, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (E- (Minerva); Virgil, Aeneid 4.559 (Mercury). Cf.
483 and E-937). For a discussion of many of the Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 82 on representa-
above pieces, see Panzanelli, Color of Life. tions of yellow-haired statues on vases. Some
101 Cf. also the Globe Theatre in London, which aspects of the importance of colour on sculp-
was also elaborately painted in Shakespeare’s tural hair (esp. gilding) are discussed by Caro-
day. line Vout, ‘What’s in a beard? Rethinking
102 Its marble-type, however, had confused Hadrian’s Hellenism’, in Simon Goldhill and
archaeologists for centuries; see Pollini, ‘Parian Robin Osborne, eds, Rethinking Revolutions
lychnites’. On the importance of Parian marble, through Ancient Greece, Cambridge, 2006, 96–123,
see Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’, 10–11. esp. 115–17.
103 For a classic analysis of the Prima Porta, see 110 A literary analogue to the figural scene on the
Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Prima Porta cuirass is Horace’s Carmen Saecu-
Augustus, Ann Arbor, 1988, 188–92; cf. Kleiner, lare, which is particularly concerned with light
Roman Sculpture, London, 1992, 61–9; Karl imagery (see Pollini et al., ‘Parian lychnites’,
Galinsky, Augustan Culture, Princeton, 1996, esp. 283).
155–64. On the date, see Valentin Muller, . ‘The 111 A phosphoprotein treatment identified across
date of the Augustus from Prima Porta’, Amer- the surface of the marble, as well as acting
ican Journal of Philology, 62, 1941, 496–9. as a preservative, is likely to have softened
104 See Ulrico Köhler, ‘Statua di Cesare Augusto’, unpainted parts of the statue. On candor as a
Annali dell’Instituto, 35, 1863, 432–49, who rele- characteristic feature of the divine in Augustan
gates discussion of colour traces to a footnote literature, see Virgil, Aeneid 8.608; [Tibullus]
(p. 434 n. 1); cf. Guglielmo Henzen, ‘Scavi di 3.6.1; Ovid, Fasti 3.772. On the ‘divine
Prima porta (2)’, Bulletino dell’Instituto di Corris- glow’ characteristic of classical cult imagery,
pondenza di Archeologia, 4, 1863, 71–8, who see n. 94.

112 On the distinctive colour of the paludamentum, which would have been particularly important
dyed with cochineal (a scarlet pigment derived for binding the delicate blue pigment. This
from crushed insects), see Pliny, Natural History binder is also likely to have had a significant
22.3; Silius Italicus 17.396. visual effect on the appearance of the colours
113 See esp. Meyer Reinhold, The History of Purple as (see p. 438).
a Status Symbol in Antiquity, Brussels, 1976. Cf. 114 For details of the multiple pigment layers, see
also Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 7. Tests in Liverani, ‘L’Augusto di Prima Porta’, 239, where
the laboratories of the Vatican Museums from he suggests that the yellow pigment super-
1999 to 2002 detected evidence of a milk-based imposed on to the Egyptian blue of the tunic
binder applied to the pigments of the statue, fringes is likely to be late-antique.

The Importance of Colour On Ancient Marb

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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

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009

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

complete reconstructions than were

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to us, were coloured in various

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cleaning of the residues on the surface

432 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009

traces of multiple pigments have been carefully documented and reconstructed,

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Much more work on pigment identification and reconstruction, particularly

434 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009

subtle and muted pigments –

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Aeneas, at least in this divinely enhanced manifestation, appears both super-

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

Lucian’s 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

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

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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

fantastical that transcended both art

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

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of the emperor’s eyes, hair and clothes, and simultaneously transcending

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