B. U. G. S.

NOT SPAM
NOT SPAM

The Romans built in white, shining marble. They painted and gilded highlights and particular architectural features. Art historians have known this for at least a hundred years, and yet art history text books still show buildings colored to match the drab ruins of today.

It once was thought that the buildings were wholly unadorned and that the statues were too. Then someone, probably a German, began rooting around in the hair of a famous Greek kouros. He found in the deep crevasses golden blond pigment. This kouros became known as the Blond Boy. But since we know that Greek society and art was based on an ideal of neat, tidy perfection, it is safe to assume that all or most all their marble statues were colored the same: glowing white skin, bright golden hair.

The Greek preferred bronze, and anyone who has spent some time with Brasso knows you can polish bronze to innumerable hues of gold, yellows, tans, and pinks. Yet Greek bronze statues in art history books are always greenish black, as if the Greeks kept their greatest works of art buried and corroding in wet earth.

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