The myth of the white marble started during the renaissance when we first began unearthing ancient statues.
Marble statues color.
Mark abbe was ambushed by color in 2000 while working on an archeological dig in the ancient greek city of aphrodisias in present day turkey.
To us classical antiquity means white marble.
The original now white peplos kore a statue of a young girl wearing a long dress belted at the waist stands in the acropolis museum in athens.
As far as they knew unpainted white marble was precisely the way their ancient forebearers had sculpted.
While to our modern eye the bright colors of greek and roman statues scream tacky to the ancients who painted them it was expensive back in the day slaves wore rough cloth like undyed and unbleached icky tan colors.
The dress of the cambridge copy is painted.
At the time he was a graduate student at new york.
The temples that housed them were in.
The well to do wore inexpensive colors and the extremely wealthy wore royal colors.
It is because of this lack of knowledge that renaissance sculptors intent on copying greek and roman forms carved their statues in unpainted white marble.