Since the first-ever exhibition of ancient statues reworked to their ancient polychromy in 2003 (see: Ancient Greece in full Technicolor), the very concept of looking at colored versions has become more familiar. Many 3D and other reconstructions of temples and monuments have been published in its wake.
It is almost unbelievable that the idea of looking at white marble or stone temples has been anchored in our minds for so long. That is not entirely surprising as some early archaeologists used to scrub their finds clean to remove the dirt, including any possible trace of color. Earlier archaeologists of the 1800s like Sir Charles Fellows have repeatedly exposed tombs and smaller temples with explicit remains of paint, either in their decoration or filling the letters of the inscriptions.
I remember strolling through the site of Arykanda, for instance, (see: Visiting the site) and staring at the stately tombs in its necropolis which Charles Fellows described with many traces of paint. I stared and stared but saw nothing except in my imagination.
The bright colors of the statues are rather shocking at first because they are so strong (see: Greek statues in blasting colors). Besides, some parts may have been gilded and have in-laid eyes as first appearing in bronze statues. Modern technologies using ultra-violet and infra-red light reveal any faint remains of color.
In my earlier blogs mentioned above, I mainly concentrated on marble statues and missed to stress the exceptional beauty of reconstructed bronze statues. Striking examples are the two Riace bronzes hauled from the sea in 1972. After they were cleaned, many details became visible. Their mouths appeared to be made from copper, as were their eyelashes and nipples. Warrior A showed silver teeth. And, of course, both statues had kept their eyes inlaid with stone.
They are very striking and even charming in their bright colors, but the detail of the head I found by chance is even more revealing! Although this was common good in the temples and houses in antiquity, these pictures look spectacular because we only have isolated examples.
[Pictures from Atlas Obscura]