Don't forget people, this is pretty much like using the paint bucket in paint. just one colour to fill in a space. In real life there were diffrent shades of the colour aswell as shadowing that would make them look alot more realistic.

NukeTheBunnys

United States1004 Posts

August 25 2010 14:00 GMT

#62

Art historians have known the statues were painted bright colors for year, perhaps even decades. What is new about this is it is the first time we have been able to actually see the colors. The only way we knew they were painted before was though written descriptions of them, and that led people to test the surface of the sculptures and find yes, there was paint here, but we have no idea what it looked like. Pretty cool that they figured out a way to get a good idea of the original colors

Purind

Canada3562 Posts

August 25 2010 14:06 GMT

#63

I thought that people from over 2000 years ago made their statues to look 2000 years old to impress the people of 2000 years in the future. Turns out I was wrong! Dangit, I was so sure

Deletrious

United States458 Posts

August 25 2010 14:24 GMT

#64

Wow I didn't realize this was not known to more people. I was told marble was chosen because it gave a layered look when you painted on it, like how skin appears.

Why are people upset by this? Think of all the nude female statues, let's get them restored to their original pink glory.

Similarly, the Sistene Chapel was not painted in faded out colors but in very vibrant ones that have been restored.

Zhou

United States832 Posts

August 25 2010 14:28 GMT

#65

That is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I love history even though I haven't been doing much with it, but man this is crazy cool!

shinigami

Canada423 Posts

August 25 2010 14:30 GMT

#66

Amazing. It makes sense that they would paint it in such colours; the vibrant patterns reveal more about their culture.

OdnoB

Canada61 Posts

August 25 2010 14:36 GMT

#67

i really liked them better without colour, this just ruined it for me

KwarK

United States44381 Posts

August 25 2010 14:39 GMT

#68

Most statues would be indoors, often fairly high up, and without bright electric lighting you couldn't really make out any detail that wasn't garishly painted. I thought it was fairly common knowledge that they were originally painted. Kinda makes the modern classical style of understated marble seem a bit silly.

Amber[LighT]

United States5078 Posts

August 25 2010 14:48 GMT

#69

On August 25 2010 17:25 ieatkids5 wrote:
Wow I've always thought that the statues were colorless, as they are now. This is like, brickshitting for me. But yeah, we've always seen the statues as without color, so they do look pretty dumb with color.

This changed my perception of greek sculptures forever.

pens

United States11 Posts

August 25 2010 15:02 GMT

#70

I'm glad some people actually read the OP. Most people here probably just scrolled through the OP, looked at the pictures, and rushed to post "wow lol so GAY these statues belong in san fran!!" Note in the article that the UV techniques can only reveal physical features and patterns on the statues, and the colors are determined by other, presumably less accurate (due to decay, contamination, etc. of organic molecules) means.

These colors are approximations discerned by spectroscopy techniques, which allows you to identify unknown organic compounds by looking at the wavelength of light its functional groups absorbs and comparing that with the results from known samples. Just to illustrate an example, IR spectroscopy might identify melanin on object X, and this lets us posit that object X might be dark in color. So the pictures in OP aren't "before and after" pictures, but rather reasonable guesses on whatever information is possible at the moment; researchers probably mapped out the location of substances on the statue and then 'colored' them in using a computer program. The parts where no conclusive data can be found are probably left blank, and this explains why the Roman dictator statue (the stoned looking dude with a baby tugging on his leg) has red dots on his armor while the rest of his armor has the same color as his skin.

Well, a long post but I can't help but be amazed at some people thinking that these are actual "before and after" pictures. A true "before and after" picture doesn't exist for stuff that existed before cameras were invented, there's currently no way we can attach a magic time filter to a DSLR and set the aperture to -2000 years and get a picture of the past. So yeah, sorry to poop on the party but the pictures in the OP are basically photoshops but neat informational photoshops instead of stuff like putting words on pictures of cats

[Agony]x90

United States853 Posts

August 25 2010 15:05 GMT

#71

Quick, we need to remake every Greek and Roman movie so that the status have color!

gogogadgetflow

United States2583 Posts

August 25 2010 15:10 GMT

#72

Ancient greeks were all gingers?

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

August 25 2010 15:14 GMT

#73

--- Nuked ---

Zapperkhan

United States437 Posts

August 25 2010 15:17 GMT

#74

I really like the color in the statues. Looking at them at first was a kinda mindblown! type of experience. Between this and the recently posted color photographs from the early 1900s makes everything feel a bit closer and more relateable.

Eeevil

Netherlands359 Posts

August 25 2010 15:23 GMT

#75

I'm pretty amazed about the brightness of all the pigments. I knew the greeks painted their statues but I never thought the colours would be that saturated.