This is great. I am glad someone is taking this on seriously! One thing to add: surely one of the biggest problems with these reconstructions is that they are mostly on the wrong surface. That is, they're reconstructed using plaster rather than marble. This is a fatal blow to their claim to a higher truth than the severely damaged originals that are actually beautiful to look at. Use of marble is sometimes done, but it is rare. See https://journals.openedition.org/techne/2656#ftn42 You can tell that the marble reconstruction is a *bit* better: it still looks jarring but it doesn't have that blaring neon effect that the plaster-based reconstructions do.
Plaster is far more opaque than marble, and the reflections are more diffuse. Paint, though, is translucent. Whatever is beneath paint matters. A lot! If you paint over marble, you have a dense surface that will lend itself to subtle shades. Also marble has subsurface scattering, i.e. light passes through it, scatters, and some of the rays come back out again. Exactly like skin. Plaster of paris, on the other hand, is 'dead' to the eye—no subsurface scattering.
Interestingly, videogame artists have noticed the same phenomenon. 3D renders of the 00s made human beings look like they are made of thick rubber. This is because the light simulation just had rays bounce straight off. By contrast, once you start modelling subsurface scattering, you have human beings of warmth and complexity. See a good demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI_QUtgJHH8
To my mind, reconstructions that only pay attention to the paint film on top of the sculpture are just as prejudicial and problematic as the 'cleaned' originals stripped of colour. They only exist to prove a limited point, and they create all sorts of misconceptions along the way.
Thanks for the comment, great point about plaster v marble, and I think this does slightly mitigate the culpability of the reconstructors. Very interesting about video games; one of many instances where we witness considerable greater artistic skill highly commercially successful media than in the official art world (albeit with their own foibles).
The evidence gap between underlayers and finished surfaces is huge here. We're basically looking at primer coats and trying to reconstruct final appearance - like guessing the Mona Lisa from a few underpainting traces. The Pompeiian frescoes showing statues are compelling counter-examples since they depict actual contemporary work with intact color schemes. Those painted statues look naturalistic, not garish. The conservation doctrine problem makes sense too - if methodology requires only including features with direct archaeological evidence, you end up with artifically flat reconstructions that exclude everything refined.The trolling hypothesis is darkly funny but probably giving too much credit. More likely its just methodological constraints producing bad outputs that happen to generate publicity becuase they're provocative.
Thanks for the comment! Something peculiar about the conservation-doctrine explanation is that there is an important sense in which we have greater direct evidence of paint in those areas of the surface where more paint remains, and in which we have *no* direct evidence for paint in those areas where no paint remains. This being so, it is unclear how a doctrine that demands that we reconstruct only that for which we have direct evidence could result in the evenly coated surfaces the statues display. It looks to me as though the reconstructors *are* in fact extrapolating, and doing so in a ludicrous fashion. For this reason, I don't think I'm being excessively charitable in crediting them with trolling (though there's more to be said about all of this).
The comparison to underlayers-only Mona Lisa reconstruction is sharp. What stands out to me is how the Pompeii frescos depicting statues consistently show these subtle gradations - like that sunburnt boxer with pale thighs - which suggests the original artisans had incredibly sophisticated techniques for layering pigment. The trolling hypothesis is funny but I think there's something more structural at play: museum culture emphasizes archaeological rigor over aesthetic plausibility, so you end up with reconstructions that technically follow the evidence but miss the actual craft logic. I've seen similar issues in historical architecture reconstruciton where strict adherence to remaining material creates results that builders from the period would've found absurd.
Thank you so much for writing this piece — I have tried to explain this concept (that classical statue restorations are likely not accurate to contemporary art styles, which would have likely been more subtle) many times to people, but often to no avail.
I really liked this, and I'm very convinced about the central thesis about classical sculpture. But I wish there was more detail and rigour in the discussion of modern attitudes among academics and restorers: I find the speculation that they're trolling a bit unsatisfying, not knowing enough about the field to decide if it's plausible or not.
There are some tantalising bits in the piece about this already. The rule that you can't restore anything that you don't have specific evidence of seems like it would be very important in why these modern reconstructions look so bad. Where did that rule come from? what is the justification for it? is it something specific about classical sculpture that means the rule led to silly and bad reconstructions, or is it a bad dogma across all contexts?
I, an outsider, would have naively assumed that restoration was more about returning a work to the way it had previously been received, where you have decent evidence of what it previously looked like. Whereas the reception of classical statues has always (in the modern world) been paint-less, and in my head repainting them is less 'restoration' and more of a new creative act; even if you are trying to imagine what they actually historically looked like, that will require more creative imagination about how the Greeks and Romans thought rather than slavish obedience to evidence (cuz we don't have that). I think the author would agree with me, but clearly the academics don't, and I'd be interested to learn more about where they've gotten their ideas and where they went wrong.
Here is my best attempt to summarise both the literature and the unspoken assumptions behind this stuff (from my point of view as an art historian and having worked on conservation too):
Conservation theory in the west was founded on a backlash against "excessively creative" reconstruction. See Ruskin, The Stones of Venice for the OG take "more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan." Basically reconstruction is inherently bad because it is 'inauthentic', because it is creative and involves wilful acts and we must return to the 'original' and 'uncorrupted' data of the real thing.
This attitude was deeply influential for decades and decades. Then it was 'set in stone' as it were in the ICOMOS "Venice charter", which again was deeply against reconstruction especially if it had the slightest hint of speculation to it. This remains a continuing theme with UNESCO, being the reason they deleted Bagrati Cathedral in Georgia from the World Heritage list—too much reconstruction, too creative, too speculative.
"Critical Heritage Studies" has disliked this principle against reconstruction and has critiqued it for many years. One of the most important elements of the critique is the fact that in many cultures it is normal to demolish and rebuild important sites, particularly in cultures that favour woodwork over stone.
As far as I can tell, however, the basic aversion to reconstruction and 'speculation' remains. A 'creative' use of paint surfaces on these reconstructed sculptures would be 'falsifications' in that sense. Doing the painting 'well', with greater subtlety, shading, mixtures of colours, sparing application of paint, or whatever it is, might make the sculptures look better. But the *way* they would look better would be unverifiable and in a sense 'misleading' because they might have looked awesome but in a slightly different way.
The silent rule here is that a reconstruction should look like a *reconstruction*, like a kind of extrapolation of data that we have to prove a particular point, rather than a resurrected artwork. See also "tratteggio" in painting conservation. In areas of total loss of paint, you deliberately make the image a blurred or hatched area to signal the fact that you don't have the necessary data about what the painting looked like.
———
Now here is my opinion. The problem with these reconstructions is that they also falsify an aesthetic experience that is indeed jarring and clashy. The re-discovered sculptures that are 'real' are also 'false' in the sense that they *lack* colour completely. But the aesthetic experience is one of a strange serenity and calm, an 18th century art historian (Winckelmann) called this "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur".
To look at these reconstructions we have to use our imagination to picture some kind of third sculpture that sits between the "quiet grandeur" of the damaged original and the chromatic discord of the reconstruction. In fact the reconstructions are a heuristic, a model, but it is all too tempting (as Maxwell E has pointed out) to treat them as a polemical reality that explodes our assumptions.
The New Yorker article about Roman statue restoration that went viral several years ago interviewed multiple Classical scholars, and each of them seemed to reference the “myth of whiteness” as something they wanted to specifically refute… with strong colors and hyperpigmented restorations.
That is, many scholars involved with restoration are hoping to skewer public perceptions in the most dramatic way possible to prove a point, and accuracy (which would be subtlety in this case) has taken a back seat.
Yes, I think this is an important factor that might merit more attention. Of course, it is probably a bad idea for experts to let the truth take a back seat in this way, even when it serves well-meaning attempt to morally educate the public!
“The rule that you can't restore anything that you don't have specific evidence of seems like it would be very important in why these modern reconstructions look so bad. Where did that rule come from? what is the justification for it? is it something specific about classical sculpture that means the rule led to silly and bad reconstructions, or is it a bad dogma across all contexts?”
Bravo! I think that’s it in a nutshell, Peter! I’ve been working in conservation for 35 years, and know this ‘archaeological’ dogma well. It’s a kind of fear of making decisions for artistic reasons; that you could somehow remove the need to justify what you’ve done and instead hide behind ‘science’. (It’s NOT scientific, though, as many others in this excellent discussion have been pointing out). And alas it’s compounded by all too many ‘restorers’ having nil artistic talent.
If any readers are curious to see what an artistic sensibility might bring, you might like to look at Rory Young’s sculptures for the screen at St Albans Cathedral. He was a superb sculptor as well as a brilliant stone mason (again, a rare combination), and a historian too, so when he was given the commission he petitioned to make them polychrome, and spent a lot of time researching not just the pigments of the medieval period, but also the media (which as others have pointed out is CRITICAL). He wasn’t 100% happy with the results - the greens at least would probably have had oil glazes, and I suspect many other features would have been glazed too; but that might have scared the horses, who could barely cope with pastel shades!
The other point about polychrome statuary it that it was a critical component of architecture; everything was painted, flowing over from wall paintings to architectural elements to statues, and that involved at the very least a dedicated specialist trade, and often some absolutely brilliant artists… Art didn’t mean framed rectangles that you could put on an easel at Sotheby’s and trade for extortionate sums…
Thanks for the very interesting comments to everyone above! One thing I'd add about the rule that one must only reconstruct that for which one has specific evidence is that there's an important sense in which we have greater evidence of paint in those areas of the surface where more paint remains, and we have only indirect evidence for paint in those areas where no paint remains. This being so, it is unclear how a doctrine that demands that we reconstruct only that for which we have specific evidence could result in the evenly coated surfaces the reconstructions exhibit. To justify this one presumably needs to add further rules which are likely to seem quite arbitrary.
For this argument to hold true the colours that can now be observed on frescos and mosaics that contain statues should be identical (or a close approximation) to their original coloration, has this been proven?
Do you mean that the colours in frescoes should be identical to the colours on statues? We'll never really know that for sure, but the pigments were very likely the same. In antiquity there was a very limited range of pigments that could be used; pigments only really explode in variety with the revolutions in chemistry in the 19th century.
The problem is that the way you use these pigments can still create a pretty huge range of visual results. Do you layer two different colours, or do you mix them? In what order? How much medium (oil, egg tempera) do you use relative to pigment? And what type of medium? Do you put a layer of varnish over the top of the paint once it's finished, or not?
I'm saying that colours on frescos and mosaics might have changed (dulled) over the years which makes the coloration of statues on frescos and mosaics more naturalistic, do we know for sure that that's not the case?
Thanks for the comments! This seems like a good way of interrogating the evidence of the frescos/mosaics. I see Alfie has provided a terrific reply below. One thing I'd add is that if the difference between the reconstructions and the statues in frescos/mosaics were due to the latter dulling over time, we'd expect the latter to exhibit a subdued palette generally, including depictions of objects such as the theatrical mask in the Villa Poppaea; and we'd expect depictions of real humans to look even more washed out than the statues. Neither predicition bears out.
Oh I see, thanks for clarifying. It's a *bit* the case, but not enough to explain the difference. If you compare the pigments in late antique wall paintings to the raw stuff today, there isn't as much difference as you might guess. The pigments used were very lightfast, typically because they are quite stable mineral-based pigments. Thus ultramarine blue, egyptian blue (a kind of synthetic glass), natural earth browns, iron oxide red, etc etc. These pigments might darken and fade a little bit but they are still fairly riotous. What's more important, probably, is the medium the pigments are bound in (oil or tempera), the mixture of the colours, the layering of the colours, and what they are physically painted onto.
Though there are some exceptions where organic pigments were used in old master and earlier artworks. One of my favourite examples is the weirdly blue grass in works by the Dutch master Aelbert Cuyp, where the grass is... Blue. This is because he used the plant-based pigment weld for the yellow to make a bright green, which has since been obliterated by UV rays and dropped out. The result is grass of the wrong colour! https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/aelbert-cuyp-the-large-dort
I enjoyed this more than I expected to, which usually means someone has annoyed me into thinking properly.
The core move is persuasive: if Roman painters could handle skin, fabric, heat and hierarchy in fresco and mosaic without looking like a kindergarten revolt, it’s odd that sculpture alone would suddenly go full Lego Augustus. The comparison to reconstructing the Mona Lisa from underlayers is a fair jab, and a necessary one. We’ve quietly slid from “this is what we can prove” to “this is what it looked like,” and that’s a category error dressed as pedagogy.
Two questions linger for me.
First: is the ugliness actually methodological rather than conspiratorial? If your rules prohibit conjecture, you inevitably produce something dead, because the finish is where art lives. At that point, you’re reconstructing chemistry, not aesthetics.
Second: are these reconstructions doing a kind of moral work? They conveniently smash the white-marble fantasy and, in the process, humiliate the public’s taste. That can feel like education, or like a scolding, depending on your tolerance for experts enjoying themselves.
The uncomfortable possibility is that they’re useful because they’re wrong. That’s effective outreach, but it’s still a bit cheeky.
Thanks for the comment and your kind words about the article! I think there are indeed defensible methodological constraints that will yield valuable insights, while nonetheless producing reconstructions that we can be confident look very unlike - and probably much less pleasing than - the originals. However, I'd also say that the success of the Brinkmann exhibit depends partly on the public's assumption that such constraints are not in operation. Your point about the probable moral objective strikes me as very insightful and interesting. I think it is likely that this is a factor. In my judgement deceiving the public for the sake of morally educating them is a bad idea (Plato's noble lie etc.), but I could imagine a defender of the exhibit arguing that its pretty venial in this case, since one needn't go very far to find out how doubtful the accuracy of these reconstructions is.
The problem I see with the reconstruction is that while they are adhering to some trace pigments, they are not taking into consideration all the rest of the evidence. There is no possible way an Artisan who can sculpt with such finesse and skill would ever allow some poor fool to glop one thick flat color onto their statue like a child filling in the lines. The hair painting alone has zero precedence or proof that any artist anywhere in any period would color statues in this manner. They are themselves creating the very inauthenticity they are trying to avoid by employing patently false technique, or might I say lack thereof. To my view they are desecrating works of art by stripping them of realism and technique because they are not willing to extrapolate from the existing knowledge of art in this period. These sculptors, artisans , artists, painters are collectively rolling in their Graves over the sacking of their work.
Thanks for the comment! I think the idea that the reconstructors are sticking scrupulously to the evidence without extrapolating is rather dubious. For we have greater direct evidence of paint (or evidence of more paint) in those areas of the surface where more paint remains, and we have only indirect evidence for paint in those areas where no paint remains. For this reason, it is hard to see how cleaving closely to the evidence could result in the thick, evenly coated surfaces of the reconstructions. I say the reconstructors *are* extrapolating, and doing so in a rather peculiar way. I agree that one can see the results as an act of desecration. This would not be the first time classical artworks have fallen victim to iconoclasm - literally, and perhaps also in a deeper sense.
Maybe part of the problem is that the people who are engaged in creating these reconstructions just are not very good artists?
Ok, I don't actually know what qualifies someone to craft a reconstruction of an ancient statue. Is that a job you get into by starting in an artistic field, or is it the job of someone whose expertise is in archaeology? But anyone who has ever tried to paint tabletop gaming miniatures can tell you that painting a statue beautifully is its own subdomain of visual art with its own idiosyncracies and tricks. Hey, maybe let some of those Warhammer guys have a crack at the Roman statues...
Thanks for the comment! A lack of artistic skill is definitely a factor worth considering. However, the reconstructions do not look like an botched attempt to paint well; in some respects the handling of the paint is highly precise, and the reconstructors appear to have taken pains to create the effect that viewers find so unpleasant. I'd love to see Warhammer enthusiasts give it a go! (Maybe the company should finance this as a marketing stunt.)
I had suspected that this was the case since I first saw those pictures years ago. I am glad to get confirmation. Really enjoyed reading this article in the print edition.
Tremendous article, though the trolling hypothesis seems a bit far fetched. Could it not simply be that the reconstructionists have been poorly educated? Judging by this forum, there are still thoughtful, well read people around - the 'death of the West' has probably been oversold - it's just that the ancient sculpture reconstructionists are not among them.
Fascinating piece, thank you! I was dimly aware that most ancient statues were not just white but I forgot (repressed?) the hideous colors of modern representations. I'm not sure if your theory of trolling is serious or if it is, well, trolling, but you mentioned something that is more sad and probably more true: To rephrase Hanlon's razor, "Don't attribute to trolling what can be adequately explained by bad taste/skill." Even when they recognize that their reconstructions are ugly, they are not able to execute it properly. Maybe there are just no artists among those who do the reconstructions? Why should there be?
Parts of the reconstructions look like if somebody had used something like "fill" in Paint or Photoshop and a whole area got the same color. Quick and dirty. When there are no large areas of the same color it looks less bad, the yellow parts of the archer above look much more jarring to me than the multicolored legs.
Thank you! A lack of artistic skill is definitely a factor worth considering. However, my sense is that the reconstructors have gone to some lengths to achieve the effect that people find so jarring - the handling of the paint is in some respects quite precise. And the result has been responsible for the success of the Brinkmann's exhibition over two decades. So, it seems very likely that they, at any rate, are acheiving the effect they are aiming at, whether or not they'd be good at doing something more beautiful
This is great. I am glad someone is taking this on seriously! One thing to add: surely one of the biggest problems with these reconstructions is that they are mostly on the wrong surface. That is, they're reconstructed using plaster rather than marble. This is a fatal blow to their claim to a higher truth than the severely damaged originals that are actually beautiful to look at. Use of marble is sometimes done, but it is rare. See https://journals.openedition.org/techne/2656#ftn42 You can tell that the marble reconstruction is a *bit* better: it still looks jarring but it doesn't have that blaring neon effect that the plaster-based reconstructions do.
Plaster is far more opaque than marble, and the reflections are more diffuse. Paint, though, is translucent. Whatever is beneath paint matters. A lot! If you paint over marble, you have a dense surface that will lend itself to subtle shades. Also marble has subsurface scattering, i.e. light passes through it, scatters, and some of the rays come back out again. Exactly like skin. Plaster of paris, on the other hand, is 'dead' to the eye—no subsurface scattering.
Interestingly, videogame artists have noticed the same phenomenon. 3D renders of the 00s made human beings look like they are made of thick rubber. This is because the light simulation just had rays bounce straight off. By contrast, once you start modelling subsurface scattering, you have human beings of warmth and complexity. See a good demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI_QUtgJHH8
To my mind, reconstructions that only pay attention to the paint film on top of the sculpture are just as prejudicial and problematic as the 'cleaned' originals stripped of colour. They only exist to prove a limited point, and they create all sorts of misconceptions along the way.
Thanks for the comment, great point about plaster v marble, and I think this does slightly mitigate the culpability of the reconstructors. Very interesting about video games; one of many instances where we witness considerable greater artistic skill highly commercially successful media than in the official art world (albeit with their own foibles).
The evidence gap between underlayers and finished surfaces is huge here. We're basically looking at primer coats and trying to reconstruct final appearance - like guessing the Mona Lisa from a few underpainting traces. The Pompeiian frescoes showing statues are compelling counter-examples since they depict actual contemporary work with intact color schemes. Those painted statues look naturalistic, not garish. The conservation doctrine problem makes sense too - if methodology requires only including features with direct archaeological evidence, you end up with artifically flat reconstructions that exclude everything refined.The trolling hypothesis is darkly funny but probably giving too much credit. More likely its just methodological constraints producing bad outputs that happen to generate publicity becuase they're provocative.
Thanks for the comment! Something peculiar about the conservation-doctrine explanation is that there is an important sense in which we have greater direct evidence of paint in those areas of the surface where more paint remains, and in which we have *no* direct evidence for paint in those areas where no paint remains. This being so, it is unclear how a doctrine that demands that we reconstruct only that for which we have direct evidence could result in the evenly coated surfaces the statues display. It looks to me as though the reconstructors *are* in fact extrapolating, and doing so in a ludicrous fashion. For this reason, I don't think I'm being excessively charitable in crediting them with trolling (though there's more to be said about all of this).
The comparison to underlayers-only Mona Lisa reconstruction is sharp. What stands out to me is how the Pompeii frescos depicting statues consistently show these subtle gradations - like that sunburnt boxer with pale thighs - which suggests the original artisans had incredibly sophisticated techniques for layering pigment. The trolling hypothesis is funny but I think there's something more structural at play: museum culture emphasizes archaeological rigor over aesthetic plausibility, so you end up with reconstructions that technically follow the evidence but miss the actual craft logic. I've seen similar issues in historical architecture reconstruciton where strict adherence to remaining material creates results that builders from the period would've found absurd.
Thank you so much for writing this piece — I have tried to explain this concept (that classical statue restorations are likely not accurate to contemporary art styles, which would have likely been more subtle) many times to people, but often to no avail.
Thanks for your kind words, hope the article helps you convince people!
I really liked this, and I'm very convinced about the central thesis about classical sculpture. But I wish there was more detail and rigour in the discussion of modern attitudes among academics and restorers: I find the speculation that they're trolling a bit unsatisfying, not knowing enough about the field to decide if it's plausible or not.
There are some tantalising bits in the piece about this already. The rule that you can't restore anything that you don't have specific evidence of seems like it would be very important in why these modern reconstructions look so bad. Where did that rule come from? what is the justification for it? is it something specific about classical sculpture that means the rule led to silly and bad reconstructions, or is it a bad dogma across all contexts?
I, an outsider, would have naively assumed that restoration was more about returning a work to the way it had previously been received, where you have decent evidence of what it previously looked like. Whereas the reception of classical statues has always (in the modern world) been paint-less, and in my head repainting them is less 'restoration' and more of a new creative act; even if you are trying to imagine what they actually historically looked like, that will require more creative imagination about how the Greeks and Romans thought rather than slavish obedience to evidence (cuz we don't have that). I think the author would agree with me, but clearly the academics don't, and I'd be interested to learn more about where they've gotten their ideas and where they went wrong.
Here is my best attempt to summarise both the literature and the unspoken assumptions behind this stuff (from my point of view as an art historian and having worked on conservation too):
Conservation theory in the west was founded on a backlash against "excessively creative" reconstruction. See Ruskin, The Stones of Venice for the OG take "more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan." Basically reconstruction is inherently bad because it is 'inauthentic', because it is creative and involves wilful acts and we must return to the 'original' and 'uncorrupted' data of the real thing.
This attitude was deeply influential for decades and decades. Then it was 'set in stone' as it were in the ICOMOS "Venice charter", which again was deeply against reconstruction especially if it had the slightest hint of speculation to it. This remains a continuing theme with UNESCO, being the reason they deleted Bagrati Cathedral in Georgia from the World Heritage list—too much reconstruction, too creative, too speculative.
"Critical Heritage Studies" has disliked this principle against reconstruction and has critiqued it for many years. One of the most important elements of the critique is the fact that in many cultures it is normal to demolish and rebuild important sites, particularly in cultures that favour woodwork over stone.
As far as I can tell, however, the basic aversion to reconstruction and 'speculation' remains. A 'creative' use of paint surfaces on these reconstructed sculptures would be 'falsifications' in that sense. Doing the painting 'well', with greater subtlety, shading, mixtures of colours, sparing application of paint, or whatever it is, might make the sculptures look better. But the *way* they would look better would be unverifiable and in a sense 'misleading' because they might have looked awesome but in a slightly different way.
The silent rule here is that a reconstruction should look like a *reconstruction*, like a kind of extrapolation of data that we have to prove a particular point, rather than a resurrected artwork. See also "tratteggio" in painting conservation. In areas of total loss of paint, you deliberately make the image a blurred or hatched area to signal the fact that you don't have the necessary data about what the painting looked like.
———
Now here is my opinion. The problem with these reconstructions is that they also falsify an aesthetic experience that is indeed jarring and clashy. The re-discovered sculptures that are 'real' are also 'false' in the sense that they *lack* colour completely. But the aesthetic experience is one of a strange serenity and calm, an 18th century art historian (Winckelmann) called this "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur".
To look at these reconstructions we have to use our imagination to picture some kind of third sculpture that sits between the "quiet grandeur" of the damaged original and the chromatic discord of the reconstruction. In fact the reconstructions are a heuristic, a model, but it is all too tempting (as Maxwell E has pointed out) to treat them as a polemical reality that explodes our assumptions.
The New Yorker article about Roman statue restoration that went viral several years ago interviewed multiple Classical scholars, and each of them seemed to reference the “myth of whiteness” as something they wanted to specifically refute… with strong colors and hyperpigmented restorations.
That is, many scholars involved with restoration are hoping to skewer public perceptions in the most dramatic way possible to prove a point, and accuracy (which would be subtlety in this case) has taken a back seat.
Yes, I think this is an important factor that might merit more attention. Of course, it is probably a bad idea for experts to let the truth take a back seat in this way, even when it serves well-meaning attempt to morally educate the public!
“The rule that you can't restore anything that you don't have specific evidence of seems like it would be very important in why these modern reconstructions look so bad. Where did that rule come from? what is the justification for it? is it something specific about classical sculpture that means the rule led to silly and bad reconstructions, or is it a bad dogma across all contexts?”
Bravo! I think that’s it in a nutshell, Peter! I’ve been working in conservation for 35 years, and know this ‘archaeological’ dogma well. It’s a kind of fear of making decisions for artistic reasons; that you could somehow remove the need to justify what you’ve done and instead hide behind ‘science’. (It’s NOT scientific, though, as many others in this excellent discussion have been pointing out). And alas it’s compounded by all too many ‘restorers’ having nil artistic talent.
If any readers are curious to see what an artistic sensibility might bring, you might like to look at Rory Young’s sculptures for the screen at St Albans Cathedral. He was a superb sculptor as well as a brilliant stone mason (again, a rare combination), and a historian too, so when he was given the commission he petitioned to make them polychrome, and spent a lot of time researching not just the pigments of the medieval period, but also the media (which as others have pointed out is CRITICAL). He wasn’t 100% happy with the results - the greens at least would probably have had oil glazes, and I suspect many other features would have been glazed too; but that might have scared the horses, who could barely cope with pastel shades!
The other point about polychrome statuary it that it was a critical component of architecture; everything was painted, flowing over from wall paintings to architectural elements to statues, and that involved at the very least a dedicated specialist trade, and often some absolutely brilliant artists… Art didn’t mean framed rectangles that you could put on an easel at Sotheby’s and trade for extortionate sums…
Thanks for the very interesting comments to everyone above! One thing I'd add about the rule that one must only reconstruct that for which one has specific evidence is that there's an important sense in which we have greater evidence of paint in those areas of the surface where more paint remains, and we have only indirect evidence for paint in those areas where no paint remains. This being so, it is unclear how a doctrine that demands that we reconstruct only that for which we have specific evidence could result in the evenly coated surfaces the reconstructions exhibit. To justify this one presumably needs to add further rules which are likely to seem quite arbitrary.
For this argument to hold true the colours that can now be observed on frescos and mosaics that contain statues should be identical (or a close approximation) to their original coloration, has this been proven?
Do you mean that the colours in frescoes should be identical to the colours on statues? We'll never really know that for sure, but the pigments were very likely the same. In antiquity there was a very limited range of pigments that could be used; pigments only really explode in variety with the revolutions in chemistry in the 19th century.
The problem is that the way you use these pigments can still create a pretty huge range of visual results. Do you layer two different colours, or do you mix them? In what order? How much medium (oil, egg tempera) do you use relative to pigment? And what type of medium? Do you put a layer of varnish over the top of the paint once it's finished, or not?
I'm saying that colours on frescos and mosaics might have changed (dulled) over the years which makes the coloration of statues on frescos and mosaics more naturalistic, do we know for sure that that's not the case?
Thanks for the comments! This seems like a good way of interrogating the evidence of the frescos/mosaics. I see Alfie has provided a terrific reply below. One thing I'd add is that if the difference between the reconstructions and the statues in frescos/mosaics were due to the latter dulling over time, we'd expect the latter to exhibit a subdued palette generally, including depictions of objects such as the theatrical mask in the Villa Poppaea; and we'd expect depictions of real humans to look even more washed out than the statues. Neither predicition bears out.
Oh I see, thanks for clarifying. It's a *bit* the case, but not enough to explain the difference. If you compare the pigments in late antique wall paintings to the raw stuff today, there isn't as much difference as you might guess. The pigments used were very lightfast, typically because they are quite stable mineral-based pigments. Thus ultramarine blue, egyptian blue (a kind of synthetic glass), natural earth browns, iron oxide red, etc etc. These pigments might darken and fade a little bit but they are still fairly riotous. What's more important, probably, is the medium the pigments are bound in (oil or tempera), the mixture of the colours, the layering of the colours, and what they are physically painted onto.
Though there are some exceptions where organic pigments were used in old master and earlier artworks. One of my favourite examples is the weirdly blue grass in works by the Dutch master Aelbert Cuyp, where the grass is... Blue. This is because he used the plant-based pigment weld for the yellow to make a bright green, which has since been obliterated by UV rays and dropped out. The result is grass of the wrong colour! https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/aelbert-cuyp-the-large-dort
Makes sense, nice contrarian take Alfie, much appreciated!
A real pleasure. It's rare that this niche topic comes up, but when it does, I will be at the keyboard for a while....!
I enjoyed this more than I expected to, which usually means someone has annoyed me into thinking properly.
The core move is persuasive: if Roman painters could handle skin, fabric, heat and hierarchy in fresco and mosaic without looking like a kindergarten revolt, it’s odd that sculpture alone would suddenly go full Lego Augustus. The comparison to reconstructing the Mona Lisa from underlayers is a fair jab, and a necessary one. We’ve quietly slid from “this is what we can prove” to “this is what it looked like,” and that’s a category error dressed as pedagogy.
Two questions linger for me.
First: is the ugliness actually methodological rather than conspiratorial? If your rules prohibit conjecture, you inevitably produce something dead, because the finish is where art lives. At that point, you’re reconstructing chemistry, not aesthetics.
Second: are these reconstructions doing a kind of moral work? They conveniently smash the white-marble fantasy and, in the process, humiliate the public’s taste. That can feel like education, or like a scolding, depending on your tolerance for experts enjoying themselves.
The uncomfortable possibility is that they’re useful because they’re wrong. That’s effective outreach, but it’s still a bit cheeky.
Thanks for the comment and your kind words about the article! I think there are indeed defensible methodological constraints that will yield valuable insights, while nonetheless producing reconstructions that we can be confident look very unlike - and probably much less pleasing than - the originals. However, I'd also say that the success of the Brinkmann exhibit depends partly on the public's assumption that such constraints are not in operation. Your point about the probable moral objective strikes me as very insightful and interesting. I think it is likely that this is a factor. In my judgement deceiving the public for the sake of morally educating them is a bad idea (Plato's noble lie etc.), but I could imagine a defender of the exhibit arguing that its pretty venial in this case, since one needn't go very far to find out how doubtful the accuracy of these reconstructions is.
The problem I see with the reconstruction is that while they are adhering to some trace pigments, they are not taking into consideration all the rest of the evidence. There is no possible way an Artisan who can sculpt with such finesse and skill would ever allow some poor fool to glop one thick flat color onto their statue like a child filling in the lines. The hair painting alone has zero precedence or proof that any artist anywhere in any period would color statues in this manner. They are themselves creating the very inauthenticity they are trying to avoid by employing patently false technique, or might I say lack thereof. To my view they are desecrating works of art by stripping them of realism and technique because they are not willing to extrapolate from the existing knowledge of art in this period. These sculptors, artisans , artists, painters are collectively rolling in their Graves over the sacking of their work.
Thanks for the comment! I think the idea that the reconstructors are sticking scrupulously to the evidence without extrapolating is rather dubious. For we have greater direct evidence of paint (or evidence of more paint) in those areas of the surface where more paint remains, and we have only indirect evidence for paint in those areas where no paint remains. For this reason, it is hard to see how cleaving closely to the evidence could result in the thick, evenly coated surfaces of the reconstructions. I say the reconstructors *are* extrapolating, and doing so in a rather peculiar way. I agree that one can see the results as an act of desecration. This would not be the first time classical artworks have fallen victim to iconoclasm - literally, and perhaps also in a deeper sense.
Maybe part of the problem is that the people who are engaged in creating these reconstructions just are not very good artists?
Ok, I don't actually know what qualifies someone to craft a reconstruction of an ancient statue. Is that a job you get into by starting in an artistic field, or is it the job of someone whose expertise is in archaeology? But anyone who has ever tried to paint tabletop gaming miniatures can tell you that painting a statue beautifully is its own subdomain of visual art with its own idiosyncracies and tricks. Hey, maybe let some of those Warhammer guys have a crack at the Roman statues...
Thanks for the comment! A lack of artistic skill is definitely a factor worth considering. However, the reconstructions do not look like an botched attempt to paint well; in some respects the handling of the paint is highly precise, and the reconstructors appear to have taken pains to create the effect that viewers find so unpleasant. I'd love to see Warhammer enthusiasts give it a go! (Maybe the company should finance this as a marketing stunt.)
I had suspected that this was the case since I first saw those pictures years ago. I am glad to get confirmation. Really enjoyed reading this article in the print edition.
Thanks!
Ha! I’ve done two videos about this topic. It really is so interesting how the popular consciousness underestimates our ancestors
This is something I brought up all the time while getting my art history degree.
Tremendous article, though the trolling hypothesis seems a bit far fetched. Could it not simply be that the reconstructionists have been poorly educated? Judging by this forum, there are still thoughtful, well read people around - the 'death of the West' has probably been oversold - it's just that the ancient sculpture reconstructionists are not among them.
I am in love with this piece THANK YOU
Thank you!!
Lots of fascinating connections I had never made. Good piece.
Thank you!
Fascinating piece, thank you! I was dimly aware that most ancient statues were not just white but I forgot (repressed?) the hideous colors of modern representations. I'm not sure if your theory of trolling is serious or if it is, well, trolling, but you mentioned something that is more sad and probably more true: To rephrase Hanlon's razor, "Don't attribute to trolling what can be adequately explained by bad taste/skill." Even when they recognize that their reconstructions are ugly, they are not able to execute it properly. Maybe there are just no artists among those who do the reconstructions? Why should there be?
Parts of the reconstructions look like if somebody had used something like "fill" in Paint or Photoshop and a whole area got the same color. Quick and dirty. When there are no large areas of the same color it looks less bad, the yellow parts of the archer above look much more jarring to me than the multicolored legs.
Thank you! A lack of artistic skill is definitely a factor worth considering. However, my sense is that the reconstructors have gone to some lengths to achieve the effect that people find so jarring - the handling of the paint is in some respects quite precise. And the result has been responsible for the success of the Brinkmann's exhibition over two decades. So, it seems very likely that they, at any rate, are acheiving the effect they are aiming at, whether or not they'd be good at doing something more beautiful