Most of them had lost their original paint after centuries of exposure to the elements.
Marble with polychromy.
Paul getty museum.
97 2 33 20 3 cm 38 1 4 13 8 in.
It is thought that the skin of the phrasikleia kore was covered with a type of gum arabic to give it a realistic appearance.
What is sculptural polychromy.
The myth of the white marble started during the renaissance when we first began unearthing ancient statues.
Originally it had a cylindrical body.
When roman marble sculpture was rediscovered in the renaissance it emerged from more than a millennium of burial essentially devoid of its ancient polychromy the monochromatic appearance of these works gave rise to new modern canons of sculpture characterized by an emphasis on form with little consideration of color.
Skeptics of polychromy question why greek and roman artists would have sculpted with such beautiful materials parian marble which was commonly used has a prized translucence and then painted.
In the late 400s and early 300s b c greek grave monuments sometimes took the form of a large lekythos.
The usual lekythos was a small terracotta vessel used to hold oil for funerary rituals but the shape was monumentalized and translated into marble for use as a grave marker.
The term polychrome from greek poly many and chroma colour was first used by antoine chrysostôme quatremère de quincy in 1814 to denote the presence of colour on classical sculpture.
1 polychromy in greek and roman sculpture is not limited to the application of pigments by painting on marble but includes a variety of other.
This article will explore the influence ancient greek sculpture had on the renaissance culture but will focus on why renaissance artists were not influenced by the polychromy of that sculpture.
Only a fragment of this marble lekythos survives.
Statuette of venus venus de clercq.
Polychromy means the art of painting in several colors especially as applied to ancient pottery sculpture and architecture.