Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Friday, January 25. 2013

Ancient Greece in color

We have posted in the (ancient) past about what Greek temples and sculpture looked like when they were built. Vividly-painted.


Smithsonian used chemistry to recreate Aphrodite removing her nightie.


It's a Roman copy of a Greek sculpture, but "what difference does it make"?

Posted by Bird Dog in History, Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:55 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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There were two levels of illumination back then - daylight and torchlight. Take a look at colors by candlelight, and bright colors are very subdued and become almost neutral in this illumination. Hence the use of the garish color "cheddar" in so many pre Civil War American quilts. It looked great at night - plus not too many people had a lot of windows then to see it as it is. Jefferson painted a major room at Monticello chrome (lead) yellow which is blinding to us today and which horrified visitors when it was restored to the walls there in recent years. Statues, religious and otherwise, throughout time have been poly-chromed, and it is maybe more normal than not in art history.
#1 MissyW on 2013-01-25 17:10 (Reply)
What happened to the golden pubic hair? Were the Greeks Brazilian before the Brazilians?
#2 chuck on 2013-01-25 18:36 (Reply)
"What difference does it make" will soon become the phrase du jour.
#3 Tom Francis on 2013-01-25 18:36 (Reply)
She must have had a nice smile.
#4 XRay on 2013-01-25 19:47 (Reply)
It is interesting that we get so used to looking at statuary in stone, that polychrome is startling, and looks somehow wrong. These things come along every now and then — a new understanding of how something was at that time in history — and tosses our assumptions out the window. It was a revelation when we learned that objects are saved from historical time because they were never used — as proved by the incorrect over-elegance of Williamsburg when archeological digs found the everyday stuff, broken in the midden.
#5 The Elephant's Child (Link) on 2013-01-25 20:50 (Reply)

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