Marble is commonly used for sculpture and as a building material.
White marble statues used to be colorful.
Ancient greece and rome were really colorful we learn.
Cc by sa 3 0 by ryan stone.
Ancient greek and roman statues weren t originally white they were in glorious color.
To us classical antiquity means white marble.
Finding out about this is pretty great but i m so used to white marbled statues it just doesn t seem right to see them colored.
The temples that housed them were in color also.
Augustus of prima porta the famous figure of the emperor standing triumphantly with one hand raised.
I have seen so many exhibitions of greek and roman statues but i never never never even imagined any old sculpture being in color.
The white marble or the monochromatic depiction of three dimensional form has been the rule and the norm for nearly 700 years.
While the image of spotless marble adonises and aphrodites are prevalent in today s culture back then the situation was very different some appear as colorful as circus clowns.
Painted replica of augustus of prima porta statue with pigments reconstructed for the tarraco viva 2014 festival cc by sa 3 0.
This includes the 1st century a d.
The arabescato marble is an off white or white colored marble category that usually displays a dark brown or black veining design.
Rather than left as blank white marble the statue would have had bronzed skin brown hair and a fire engine red toga.
By observing how animals used color in order to attract and repel early humans set out to color themselves.
This marble is sourced from carrara in italy.
Most of them had lost their original paint after centuries of exposure to the elements.
This statue was originally painted.
But in reality for much of human existence colored sculpture was the rule and the norm.
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals most commonly calcite or dolomite marble is typically not foliated although there are exceptions in geology the term marble refers to metamorphosed limestone but its use in stonemasonry more broadly encompasses unmetamorphosed limestone.
The ancients loved color.
The myth of the white marble started during the renaissance when we first began unearthing ancient statues.
Italy is one of the leading marble sourcing and quarrying country in the world and exports these marble types globally.