Posted on 08/20/2010 12:31:24 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
Original Greek statues were brightly painted, but after thousands of years, those paints have worn away. Find out how shining a light on the statues can be that's required to see them the way they were thousands of years ago.
Although it seems impossible to think that anything could be left to discover after thousands of years of wind, sun, sand, and art students, finding the long lost patterns on a piece of ancient Greek sculpture can be as easy as shining a lamp on it. A technique called ‘raking light' has been used to analyze art for a long time. A lamp is positioned carefully enough that the path of the light is almost parallel to the surface of the object. When used on paintings, this makes brushstrokes, grit, and dust obvious. On statues, the effect is more subtle. Brush-strokes are impossible to see, but because different paints wear off at different rates, the stone is raised in some places – protected from erosion by its cap of paint – and lowered in others. Elaborate patterns become visible.
Ultraviolet is also used to discern patterns. UV light makes many organic compounds fluoresce. Art dealers use UV lights to check if art has been touched up, since older paints have a lot of organic compounds and modern paints have relatively little. On ancient Greek statues, tiny fragments of pigment still left on the surface glow bright, illuminating more detailed patterns.
Once the pattern is mapped, there is still the problem of figuring out which paint colors to use. A series of dark blues will create a very different effect than gold and pink. Even if enough pigment is left over so that the naked eye can make out a color, a few thousand years can really change a statue's complexion. There's no reason to think that color seen today would be anything like the hues the statues were originally painted.
There is a way around this dilemma. The colors may fade over time, but the original materials – plant and animal-derived pigments, crushed stones or shells – still look the same today as they did thousands of years ago. This can also be discovered using light.
Infrared and X-ray spectroscopy can help researches understand what the paints are made of, and how they looked all that time ago. Spectroscopy relies on the fact that atoms are picky when it comes to what kind of incoming energy they absorb. Certain materials will only accept certain wavelengths of light. Everything else they reflect. Spectroscopes send out a variety of wavelengths, like scouts into a foreign land. Inevitably, a few of these scouts do not come back. By noting which wavelengths are absorbed, scientists can determine what materials the substance is made of. Infrared helps determine organic compounds. X-rays, because of their higher energy level, don't stop for anything less than the heavier elements, like rocks and minerals. Together, researchers can determine approximately what color a millennia-old statue was painted.
The color? Always something tacky.
Via Harvard, Colour Lovers, Tate, The Smithsonian, Colorado University, and Carleton.
Top two images are reconstructions created by Vinzenz Brinkmann.
Haloween V!!
True. I believe when we go hog wild at Christmas time with lights and decorations that is how most of us secretly would like to decorate all year long but are too shy.
In more recent times, fine wooden furniture was usually painted. Now, we want the natural wood exposed — in part to distinguish the pieces from cheap utilitarian objects made from plywood, Formica, or plastic. We also appreciate the wood grain, and the visible joinery. When the common man had natural wood furniture, with visible joinery — fine furniture was painted or enameled & joinery hidden, as a mark of quality.
Makes classical sculpture seem distinctly less classical.
The jokers over at Cracked.com talked about this recently, and I liked how they put it: "Ancient Greece looked more like someone crashed their LGBT pride parade into a Mardi Gras Festival."
So, all of the nude statues had clothes painted on them? Sounds very Victorian.
But one is forced to consider how much of our taste for what is and isn’t tacky is dictated by centuries of what we thought Greek/Roman art looked like.
I’m pretty sure that a brightly colored clown shooting an arrow would be tacky no matter your background.
Oh man, that’s great! I can’t stop laughing
” We also appreciate the wood grain, and the visible joinery. When the common man had natural wood furniture, with visible joinery fine furniture was painted or enameled & joinery hidden, as a mark of quality.”
I just spent serious bucks at the behest of Mrs. TTR covering brick with stucco/sanded material (in part, bricks going through), putting rough rock or rough-hewn bricks in place of brick, wooden “board & batten” shutters in place of refined shutters, and gas lamps in place of electric lamps —— all in a rather successful attempt to make our nice suburban house (with a slate roof, though) look like a house an old English cottage circa 1500.
It’s very pretty, but funny.
Oh and paid some Apache kid to hammer at the bricks that show with a hammer on the sharp edges to make them look very, very old.
The painted statues have an It a Small World after all quality to them. Shudder
Hey, there is a use for an art history degree. OH, wait they used ultra-violet light, you mean like maybe Physics, huh?
This pic raises an interesting question. Who would have turned to stone first? Helen Thomas, or her sister, Medusa?
LOL. This shoots my idea of classical Greece. We now know that all those noble warriors were really harlequin clowns, and the alabaster maidens in diaphanous drapes were just painted floozies in floral frocks.
Me too...
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