Painted Marble

[A] The white marble sculpture that stands for classical antiquity in most museums is a modern taste, not an ancient one. Greek and Roman statues were painted, often in strong colours, and the evidence is not in doubt: pigment survives in the recesses of carved drapery, and ultraviolet light reveals the outlines of patterns long after the colour itself has gone. [B]

[C] What is disputed is how the paint looked. A reconstruction has to decide on a shade, and the traces that survive tell us which mineral was used rather than how thickly or how transparently it was applied. Reconstructions in museums have therefore been criticised for a garishness that may belong to the reconstructor rather than to the original. [D] The criticism is fair but has been pressed too far, because the alternative on offer is not a more accurate colour but no colour at all, and no colour is the one option the evidence rules out. A reconstruction that is certainly wrong in its tone is closer to the truth than a bare surface that is wrong in kind.