I was lurking on my colleagues’ blog when I noticed Brezo’s post: The Met: Chroma (I highly recommend you to read it!) when she visited The MET’s Chroma exhibition.
Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture was once colorful, vibrantly painted and richly adorned with detailed ornamentation. Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color reveals the colorful backstory of polychromy—meaning “many colors,” in Greek—and presents new discoveries of surviving ancient color on artworks in The Met’s world-class collection.
The exhibition’s topic reminds me of a once-popular discussion of how the ancient Greek statues that we all know and see are not actually white.
What this means is that the sculpture and architecture of the ancient world was, in fact, brightly and elaborately painted. The only reason it appears white is that centuries of weathering have worn off most of the paint.
And it makes my dear little heart pretty happy to know that the opening ceremony of Athens 2004 is not far from the truth.
(Pictures taken from the Youtube video)