The Polychromie of Ancient Art

Although ancient Greek art was, in fact, painted, the idea that it only consisted of plain white marble sculptures still largely remains in the public imagination and has long been an established fact among scholars. Even though evidence to the contrary has presented itself it took quite a while for scholars to recognise ancient Greek polychromy as an established fact. This essay will look at ancient polychromy. It will particularly look at the fact that ancient Rome and Greek polychromy took such a long time to be generally recognised amongst scholars. I will look at how scholars simply discounted the evidence and why they would have done so.

                                                                                                                                               

There is both literary and archaeological evidence to suggest that ancient Greek sculptures were painted. Despite this evidence, it took quite a while for the idea that ancient Roman and Greek art is polychrome to be generally accepted in academia. Before the eighteen hundred’s it was thought that ancient Greek and Roman art was monochrome but, in the eighteen hundred’s evidence was found to suggest that ancient art was polychrome. Since then scholars have looked at this evidence and studied it. Scholars had very different ideas concerning the polychromy of ancient Greek and Roman art. Some looked at the evidence and concluded that ancient Greek and Roman art was painted, and others stubbornly maintained the idea that it was monochrome:

Greek architecture and sculpture present ample evidence of their original colouring. In addition to obvious traces of pigment, there are secondary indications of paint which have been acknowledged to varying degrees through different phases in the study of polychromy. (Jan Stubbe Østergaard, 2010)

Although I have said that scholars have studied ancient Greek and Roman polychromy since the eighteen hundred’s it was always studied to the same degree. The study was significantly altered by certain historical events such as the World Wars and also haltered by a large number of scholars who refused to believe that ancient Greek and Roman sculptures could possibly have been painted. It was only in the 1980s that ancient art could fully be studied without any bias. (Jan Stubbe Østergaard, 2010) Before this time, we can see that scholars simply overlooked the overwhelming evidence in favour of their own ideas:

Ancient written sources assure us that sculpture was painted, but definite indications of this were frequently translated so imprecisely that their meaning was distorted. The fact that certain philologists translated the term graptha andreia (“Painted sculpture”) simply as “paintings” is clear evidence of their position in the polychrome debate. (Vinzenz Brikmann, 2008).

Here we can see a clear example of how someone would simply disregard the evidence in favour of their own ideas. Astonishingly this is something that many scholars, who did not believe that ancient Greek and Roman art was painted, would have done.

                                                                                                                                               

The first ancient Greek or Roman sculptures that were rediscovered were found as unpainted sculptures. The reason for this of course is that the ravages of time have caused the paint to come off. Naturally, those who found these sculptures would have assumed that this was how ancient sculptures would have looked like in the first place. It is as Jan Stubbe Østergaard has said in his article Polychromy of Ancient Sculptures:

“As interest in classical Antiquity was revived with intensity from the early thirteenth century onwards. Antique sculptures were perceived from the start as works in white marble. The simple reason was that they exhibited hardly any traces of colour.“ (Jan Stubbe Østergaard, 2010)

Remarkably, something so simple could create such a large misconception.

                                                                                                                                               

But surely this misconception was rectified once evidence was found indicating that ancient sculptures were painted. This does not seem to have been the case at all. It took quite a while for the idea that ancient Greek art was polychrome to be generally accepted in academia. For centuries it has been thought that ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were not painted but in the eighteen-hundreds discoveries were made to suggest that ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were in fact painted. These discoveries sparked a debate concerning the polychromy of ancient sculptures. Because of these findings, there were now some scholars who believed that ancient sculptures were painted. This is what sparked this debate. There was also quite a large number of scholars that, despite the mountain evidence, still maintained the idea that ancient Greek and Roman art was monochrome.

                                                                                                                                               

There is more than one reason why scholars found it so hard to believe that Greek and Roman sculptures were painted. The first of which is the sheer amount of time for which it has been thought that Greek sculptures were white marble sculptures and the extent to which this idea has been reinforced over time. People did not only look at and admire ancient art for what it was but also created their own art based on the ancient sculptures which they found:

Sculptures of modern times have greatly been inspired by the art of antiquity, yet in their ignorance of ancient polychrome, they have in fact created something entirely new, namely unpainted sculpture. (Vinzenz Brikmann, 2008)

For centuries now, artists have made art that they thought was based on what they thought ancient Greek and Roman sculptures would have looked like:

Michelangelo and Leonardo were pioneers in this respect, as was Giorgio Vasari. (Jan Stubbe Østergaard, 2010)

In creating this new art form these artists only strengthened the idea that ancient Greek and Roman art was unpainted. I would thus say that the idea that Greek and Roman sculptures were unpainted is not only an idea that has existed for quite a long time but also an idea that has been significantly strengthened over time.

                                                                                                                                               

The second reason for stubbornness is monochrome sculpture has become a symbol. Monochrome sculpture has come to symbolise the superiority of Western civilisation over others. “Works in white marble… characterise not only Western Civilization in relation to others, but at the same time demonstrates its superiority – a standard of Western excellence supposedly in classical Antiquity.” (Jan Stubbe Østergaard, 2010) It was that Greek and Roman art (which is perceived as Western art) was superior to the art of other civilisations. It is as Jan Stubbe Østergaard sarcastically puts it in his article Polychromy of Ancient Sculpture:

In all other civilizations of antiquity, colour is an integral element of architecture and sculpture of the highest order. This is not the case in the West – we are the exception. We have attained a higher, finer intellectual level by penetrating the deeper structural truths, in philosophy, politics, geometry and aesthetics, Insights of such profundity appear to find perfect expression in pure white marble. Colour is superfluous. It implies the superficial

                                                                                                                                                      

Ironically, the monochrome nature of Ancient Greek and Roman art was seen as a symbol of Western culture (therefore also white culture) as being superior to others. Firstly, because the Greeks did in fact see the painting of the sculpture as being an important part in a sculpture’s creation. If the sculpture was not painted it was unfinished. Secondly, the Greeks themselves would not have had the concept of the West or of whiteness that we have today. They undoubtedly thought of themselves as superior to other cultures, but they did not think of themselves as white or as Westerners. In his article, “Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did "White People" Become "White"?”, James H. Dee challenges the idea of whiteness and says that it is not a concept that the Greeks would have had. As an example, to make his point he tells us of what one of the things one of the Greek generals did during the Persian wars:

To encourage his troops to despise their Persian opponents, Agesilaus had some prisoners displayed naked. When his soldiers saw how white and unfit they were    (because they did not strip down as Greek men regularly did), they decided that it would be just like fighting women. (James H. Dee, 2004)

At least Greek men did not view themselves as being white. To Greeks, paleness was considered to be a feminine attribute. Women were pail because they spent all their time indoors, whereas men spent their time outside and thus they were not pail. Because the Persians' bodies were pail because they did not expose themselves to the sun the Greeks regarded them as feminine. This is of course because Greek men exercised naked and therefore they were anything, but pail. They did not only view paleness as something that is feminine but also something that is a wholly un-Greek characteristic:

In the eyes of the Greeks, "white" skin was an accepted and expected characteristic: women, barbarians living north of the Alps, philosophers, and cowards.16 (James H. Dee, 2004)

The idea that Greek and Roman art represents the superiority of Western art therefore is completely ridiculous and untrue. Greeks had no concept of Western civilization or of whiteness. This was not a concept that existed yet. Of course, there is also the fact that Greek art was painted and therefore not monochrome. I would say that this is the main reason why some scholars refused to believe that Greek and Roman sculptures were painted. If Greek art was painted it could no longer represent Western superiority: seeing as without being monochrome it is not explicitly different from the art from other civilisations.

                                                                                                                                                       

The idea that ancient Greek art was monochrome is an idea that started out as a mere misunderstanding and turned into a completely and utterly ridiculous symbol. A symbol that took more than a century to be removed is generally accepted as wrong amongst academia and still remains largely within the public imagination.

                                                                                                                                                      

References.

 

Brinkmann, V. 2008. The polychromy of ancient Greek sculpture. In Panzanelli, R. et al., eds. The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, pp 18-39.

 

Dee, J. 2004. Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did ‘White People’ Become ‘White’? Classical Journal 99: 157–67.

 

Østergaard, J. S. 2010. The Polychromy of Antique Sculpture: A Challenge to Western Ideals? In Circumlitio: The Polychromy of Antique and Mediaeval Sclupture, ed. By V. Brinkmann, O. Primavesi, and M. Hollein. Frankfurt am Main: Hirmer Verlag, pp. 78–101.

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