IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE

1 Detail of the painted Prima Porta Augustus. Photo: Wolfram Martini, with permission from Staatliche Antikensammlung und .

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE

MARK BRADLEY

When the white marble head of an Amazon was discovered at Herculaneum in March 2006 with delicate colours clearly preserved on the hair, eyes and eyela- shes, the news came as little surprise to the world of archaeology and art history (plate 2). Several venues around Europe, including museums in Munich, and , had already hosted a bold and striking exhibition of painted Greco-Roman casts, sometimes set alongside their white marble originals, representing not an arbitrary reconstructive imagination but many years of intensive scientific and archaeological research. Following more than two hundred years of research into painted marble, museums are now highly cautious about cleaning the surfaces of their sculpture collections, and most serious reconstructions of Greco-Roman architecture and sculpture are prepared to integrate elements alongside their gleaming white marbles. Nevertheless, the colourful discovery at Herculaneum was reported in several mainstream European newspapers, demonstrating the enduring potential for paint on clas- sical sculpture to surprise or shock the public, and the continuing need to inte- grate colour properly into the classical aesthetic. Winckelmann’s long-lived dogma about pure white classical art still has its supporters.1 And yet, while most discussions include a stock footnote to the effect that ancient sculpture was coloured, paint is seldom taken into account in art- historical studies of ancient marble sculpture.2 In spite of the striking aesthetic differences between the original Prima Porta statue of Augustus and its painted reconstruction (plates 3 and 4; see also plate 1), for example, the significance of its colours has still not been integrated into serious discussions of its art-historical importance or its artistic composition. The choice of marble for ancient sculpture and the ramifications of the stone’s natural colour have received some attention, but the difference that the application of coloured coatings might have made to individual pieces remains on the whole underexplored.3 This is partly a result of the disappearance of paint traces from the majority of surviving pieces of sculpture, and partly to the degree of guesswork involved in reconstructing the original state of pieces even where some traces remain. However, recent work by and other archaeologists and art historians in Europe has drawn attention back to the importance of colour on ancient sculpture, as well as the possibilities granted by new scientific methods for more accurate and

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8365.2009.00666.x ART HISTORY . ISSN 0141–6790 . VOL 32 NO 3 . JUNE 2009 pp 427-457 & Association of Art Historians 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 427 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE

complete reconstructions than were previously thought possible. Through the use of ultraviolet fluorescence and infrared reflection and raking light, paint traces largely invisible to the naked eye (and the ‘ghosts’ left by paint traces on the stone) can be detected. Furthermore, electronic databases allow us to detect patterns in the use of pigments on different sculptural types and decorative features.4 We are now in a stronger position than ever before to enrich our appreciation and under- standing of ancient sculptural polychromy. This paper aims to complement the pioneering technical and reconstructive work that has recently been carried out by approaching the subject from the perspective of the cultural history of colour and perception in the ancient world. Although it will review material and find- ings from Archaic and Classical Greek and 2 Head of an Amazon, from a life-size statue Hellenistic periods, this study will concen- discovered near the Nonius Balbus Basilica trate on the art and literature of imperial at Herculaneum, c. CE 60. Marble. Hercula- Rome, which at the present time is under- 5 neum: Antiquarium, SAP 8702. Photo: represented in this field. The recent Riccardo Giordano/ Herculaneum Conser- exhibitions of painted Greek and Roman vation Project. Published with the kind casts at more than ten international permission of the Soprintendenza Speciale venues and the publication of Brinkmann’s per i Beni Culturali di Napoli e Pompei - key study Die Polychromie der archaischen und Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita` Culturali. fruhklassischen. Skulptur (2003) make this an opportune moment to review the question of what difference it makes to think of ancient sculpture in colour rather than in monochrome. How does colour alter the visual dynamics of the Parthenon frieze? What does a painted Prima Porta Augustus achieve that a white version does not? If Trajan’s column was painted, does that change the way it was viewed? How does (or how should) colour transform our aesthetic of ancient art? Answers to these challenging questions can be reached by integrating the principles of pigment distribution (which colours are used to define which features?) and literary ekphrasis (how does an ancient viewer describe a painted object?). This article will first review some of the most significant pieces of sculpture on which significant paint traces have survived, and consider in indi- vidual cases the basic functions of coloured coatings and patinas. By integrating visual material with literary evidence, it will then assess the significance of sculptural polychromy under four headings: visibility, finish, realism and trompe- l’oeil. Finally, as a ‘pilot’ for the application of these interpretative guidelines to a single piece of ancient sculpture, the article will revisit the Prima Porta Augustus and consider some of the ways in which polychromy can enrich our under- standing and interpretation of this key piece of Roman art.

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3 (left) The Prima Porta statue of Augustus, c. CE 15. Parian marble, height 204 cm. Rome: Vatican Museums (inv. 2290). Photo: Vatican Museums. 4 (right) The painted plaster reconstruction of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus, 2002–3. Rome: Vatican Museums (inv. 36858). Photo: Vatican Museums.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE Painted marble is a controversial subject which has elicited little agreement since it was first raised in the early nineteenth century. It is now generally accepted that most – and perhaps all – Greco-Roman marble sculpture and architecture (like its Egyptian and Near-Eastern counterparts) received some form of supple- mentary coating to modify and enhance its surfaces, which also manipulated the colour.6 This surface treatment is now recognized to be integral to the overall effect of the sculpture. In particular, it has been observed that the draped parts of statues, their eyes, eyelashes, lips, hair and accessories received coats of colour, and it is likely that the remaining areas were also treated so that the appearance of the stone was modified.7 The backgrounds of grave reliefs and architectural friezes were normally brightly coloured, and details in the foreground were frequently picked out with colour and metal attachments.8 Evidence of the gilding of specific features of marble sculpture, both statuary and relief sculp- ture, to produce the effect of metal accoutrements as well as to distinguish certain features of heroic figures survives from as early as the fifth century BCE through to the end of antiquity.9 In addition to gilding, there is widespread evidence for the completion of marble sculpture with features in bronze, lead, stucco or wooden accessories: weapons, armour, sceptres, hair, beards and jewellery in these materials were added to a wide range of sculpture from all

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5 Laurence Alma-Tadema, Pheidias and the Frieze of the Parthenon, 1868, showing Pheidias unveiling the bold colours of the frieze to his (much more subdued and paler-skinned) guests. Oil on canvas, 72.3 Â 109.2 cm. Birmingham: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Photo: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. periods. Eyes were normally painted directly on to the marble, but they could also be inlaid using enamel, ivory, glass, coloured marbles or gems, sometimes kept in place with bronze eyelashes.10 Early imperial Rome also saw the proliferation of complex and sophisticated combinations of marbles in order to produce realistic coloristic effects, with white marbles used to render skin, darker stones for the hair and textured marbles for the clothes: even for these pieces, one should probably expect further embellishment by means of coatings and patinas for the skin and paint for the lips and eyes.11 Nor did applications of colour simply modify carved details already marked out on the stone: often paint alone was employed to render and differentiate detail on smooth surfaces.12 Marble was symptomatic of a wide range of sculptural materials that were treated and embellished to produce subtle and realistic effects of colour. The surfaces of sculpture in limestone, sandstone or porous volcanic stones were often covered with plaster or stucco, and it is generally accepted that these coverings were painted in their entirety.13 Terracotta sculpture was also intricately painted, its pigments often better preserved than marble sculpture owing to its porous surfaces and the context in which it was normally kept.14 In addition, the surfaces of bronze statuary were regularly variegated or coloured with different alloys, inlaid or brightly painted eyes, silver-plated teeth and fingernails, darkened hair and other features, and were sometimes gilded or coated with various patinas and pigmentations.15 The same was probably also true of the majority of sculpture in ivory, most notably variegated chryselephantine statuary.16 It should be expected that antiquity’s wooden statues, now almost entirely lost

430 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE to us, were coloured in various ways.17 Furthermore, polychromy – whether produced by combining stones or metals or by applying pigments to sculptural surfaces – cut across the full range of sculp- ture types: busts, statues and architectural sculpture, as well as vase reliefs and grave stelai. This was symptomatic of ancient Mediterranean art in general: mummy portraits, polychrome vases, mosaics and wall-paintings (to give just a few examples) regu- larly deployed rich combinations of colours. Evidence of coloured sculpture stretches from the seventh century BCE through to at least the third or fourth century CE, and tempera techniques and other forms of pigmentation persisted in Byzantine, Medieval and Early Modern sculpture.18 On the whole, it seems, where there was form there was colour. We can no longer accept the absence of visible paint traces on pieces of marble sculpture as evidence that they were originally monochrome: it has been amply demonstrated that excavation methods, cast modelling, museum histories, weathering and pigment disintegration can account for the near or complete disappearance of pigment traces.19 There is now a veritable list of celebrated ancient marble known to have been transformed by coats of colour. One of the earliest, and arguably most important, addi- tions to this list was the sculptural relief of the Parthenon, the subject of heated controversy throughout the nineteenth century owing to a 6 Painted plaster reconstruction of the ‘Peplos Kore’, series of bold interpretations and c. 530 BCE (1975, repainted 1996). Cambridge: The garish reconstructions (plate 5), Museum of Classical Archaeology (inv. 34a). Photo: and in the 1930s for the rigorous The Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge.

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cleaning of the residues on the surface of the Elgin marbles.20 On firmer ground was evidence of colour preserved on the marble korai and kouroi that idealized Athenian womanhood and manhood: these had long offended modern classical aesthetics with their brightly painted bodies, which imitated the decorative luxury of the East. As examples of Archaic sculpture, however, they could be relegated to a pre-classical past, before the Greeks had acquired any ‘classical’ taste. Nevertheless, the imaginative reconstruction of the Peplos Kore in vivid red, blue, green and white pigments complete with jewellery, head-dress and a meniskos, exhibited in the first section of the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge since 1979 (plate 6), has 7 Detail from the colour rendering of the never failed to provoke a reaction from ‘Alexander Sarcophagus’, showing sophisticated visitors through its contrast to all the 21 and realistic uses of colour to depict the figure other white casts surrounding it. of a Persian fighter. Photo: F. Winter, Der Among other important pieces of Alexandersarkophag aus Sidon, 1912, Strassburg. Archaic sculpture, the frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi (c. 525 BCE) retains traces of paint across its surfaces and has been closely studied.22 Other important Greek coloured sculptures, however, were predominantly Clas- sical: in particular, traces of bright colours were noted by the excavators of the Temple of Aphaia at Aigina in 1811, not only on the friezes and pedimental sculptures, but also on the floor of the cella, the walls, the marble gutters and antefixes and on the roof ridge tiles.23 Striking combinations of abundant mineral pigments have also been identified and documented on the Propylaea and the Erechtheum on the Athenian Akropolis, the Hephaesteion, the pedi- mental sculptures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, a wide array of architectural and statuary sculpture from Magna Graecia, the Great Macedonian tomb at Lefkadia, the fourth-century Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the so-called ‘Alexander Sarcophagus’ in the Archaeological Museum.24 The latter piece in particular is thought to mark a period of major change in ancient polychromy, with a greater focus on realism, subtle pastel colours, and a more sophisticated aesthetic use of the underlying marble25 (plate 7). Less work has been conducted on Hellenistic and Roman painted sculpture, although brightly coloured human eyes appear to have been the norm, and colour traces have been identified across a wide range of sculpture types, particularly cult statues, garden sculpture and portraits.26 Of surviving polychrome sculpture from Rome, only two pieces have been systematically studied. The most important is the Parian marble statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, on which extensive

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8 (left) The head of Caligula, c. CE 37–41, photographed in 1957 before it was damaged, showing clear traces of colour on and around the left eye. Parian marble, height 31 cm. Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (inv. 2687). Photo: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. 9 (right) The first of two painted reconstructions (‘Caligula A’) of the head of Caligula, 2003. Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (inv. 2687a). Photo: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

traces of multiple pigments have been carefully documented and reconstructed, many of which are still visible to the naked eye27 (see plate 3). Another, which along with the Prima Porta has been a highlight of the recent exhibitions of painted replicas, is the head of Caligula in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek at Copenhagen28 (plate 8). This head retains many pigment traces in the hairlines and around the eyes, as well as a tempera technique applied to the skin, and was clearly painted in its entirety. Its painted marble reconstruction (plate 9) exhibits the same kinds of mineral pigments that have been identified on the original piece and is among the most successful recent attempts to reconstruct sculpture in colour. Its detailed upward-staring eyes, lacquered highlights in the hair, and the use of black pigmentation to create the impression of depth in between the locks provide a striking example of the sophistication and realism that may have been applied to the process of painting Roman marbles. Roman sculptural relief has received even less attention, although paint traces have been identified on the intricate sculptures of Trajan’s column in the Forum of Trajan at Rome, a factor that may have been instrumental in enhancing the visibility of this celebrated monument (see below p. 436).29 Tauroctony reliefs from the cult sites of Mithras also often retain traces of colour and gilding owing to the stable underground conditions in which they have been preserved; these reliefs were colour-coded so that individual features of the scene’s iconography could be picked out, and Mithras’ face was sometimes gilded as he stared back towards the sun (see plate 10).

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10 Mid-third-century CE relief depicting Mithras Tauroctonos (the Bull-Slayer) with gilded face as he stares back towards the Sun, with polychrome features clearly preserved in the scene around him. Marble, 90.5 Â 148 cm. Rome: Terme di Diocleziano, Museo Nazionale Romano. Photo: Terme di Diocleziano, Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome, inv. 205837.

Much more work on pigment identification and reconstruction, particularly for Roman sculpture, remains to be carried out. Countless pieces retain traces of pigments, ‘ghosts’ left on the surface of the stone by the pigments, and tell-tale rasp marks, and the technology is at hand to undertake comprehensive surveys; unfortunately, pigment traces on sculpture are deteriorating rapidly every day, and there is an urgent need to collect data while it is still available. Research projects around the globe are confronting this challenge: besides the collabora- tive efforts of Munich, Rome and Copenhagen for the recent exhibitions, the Louvre has conducted important work on its collection of Hellenistic funerary stelai, and the British Museum is undertaking a project to produce a ‘virtual Parthenon’ in full colour.30 In New York, Mark B. Abbe is leading important research into painted and gilded marble sculpture at Aphrodisias, and in Copenhagen Jan Østergaard, Curator of Ancient Art at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, has established the interdisciplinary ‘Copenhagen Polychromy Network Project’ (2008–10) in order to analyse a representative selection of classical sculptures in the Glyptotek with a view to identifying pigment traces and attempting recon- structive work.31 The findings of all this research look set to dramatically increase our knowledge and understanding of the range, methods and problems of sculptural polychromy.

VISIBILITY One aesthetic compromise that is sometimes reached by those less willing to accept the polychromy of is that marbles were coloured with

434 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE subtle and muted pigments – and indeed there is some evidence that Classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman sculp- ture may have been coloured in increasingly sophisticated ways (discussed below).32 However, one important function of sculptural polychromy that has long been acknowledged, and which has in particular been foregrounded by Brinkmann in his study of Archaic sculpture, is that the bold, intense mineral pigments used were a means of enhancing visibility, strengthening legibility and distinguishing heroic or divine figures.33 The early fifth- century BCE figure of the archer (identified as Paris) from the pediment of the temple of Aphaia at Aegina – one of the highlights of Brinkmann’s reconstructive work – was brightly painted precisely so that it could be picked out from a distance against the blue background of the pedi- ment, and not at eye level as it was presented in recent exhi- bitions34 (plate 11). The pedi- ment sculptures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia were also vividly painted to increase their visibility.35 Black under- coating detected between the ridges of drapery on the Parthenon sculptures produced a three-dimensional effect, and contrasting hues may also have helped viewers to distinguish overlapping horses on the 11 Painted model of the archer from the west pediment north and south sides of the of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, inserted into its frieze.36 It has also been pedimental context in order to demonstrate the impor- observed that pedimental tance of colour and colour contrast for visibility. sculptures on tall buildings Munich: Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek. were coloured more brightly Photo: Vinzenz Brinkmann.

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 435 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE than those on low buildings, and that vividly coloured backgrounds helped viewers to pick out the figures.37 Colour must have been critical to monuments such as Trajan’s column, where distinctive features (such as the emperor in purple) could be highlighted and artistic detail appreciated by viewers standing some twenty feet or further away. Paint offers one solution to the perennial problem of how viewers could pick out the intricate sculpted detail of such monuments. One effect of using bold colours to enhance visibility, it has been argued, is that the sculptures may have appeared super-natural: they were painted ‘not in imitation of, but by analogy with nature, the colours bolder and simpler’.38 At a distance, however, bright colours do not necessarily make the subject seem unrealistic; viewed at close proximity, bold pigments professionally applied to pieces such as the Prima Porta Augustus and the Copenhagen Caligula catch the attention and make the sacred and the powerful stand out.39 This key idea, and its connection with Roman heroic statuary, was memorably captured by Virgil in the first book of the Aeneid, when Venus finally reveals her son Aeneas to the Carthaginian queen with a view to captivating her with his statuesque beauty:

He [Achates] had scarcely finished speaking, when suddenly the enveloping cloud parted and vanished into thin air. Aeneas stood there and gleamed in the bright light (claraque in luce refulsit), like a god in his face and shoulders; for his mother herself had breathed the purple glow (purpureum lumen) of youth into her son’s distinguished locks and a pleasant spark (laetos honores) into his eyes – just as hands add distinction (decus) to ivory, or when silver or Parian marble is laced with yellow gold.40

Aeneas, at least in this divinely enhanced manifestation, appears both super- human and statuesque: Virgil exploits both the metaphors of heroic statuary and of divine lustre in order to convey his appearance and his impression on the queen.41 The poet’s language captures the effects of clarity and luminosity (clar- aque in luce refulsit . . . lumen purpureum . . . laetos honores . . . decus) and then compares Aeneas to a chryselephantine or Parian marble statue, its surfaces embellished by artistic expertise just as Aeneas’ striking figure is evoked by Virgilian ekphrasis. The human form provides only the raw material; artistic skill provides the finishing touches – sea-purple dye on ivory or gilded decoration on marble. Elsewhere in the Aeneid, figures that dazzle and captivate characters with their appearance are likened to statues: in particular, the blushing Lavinia, who says not a word in the poem but through her beauty alone enraptures the Italian prince Turnus and thereby crafts his doom, is also compared to an ivory sculpture dyed with purple (12.64–69). The heroic statue, then, was set up both as the passive spectacle that drew the viewer to it, and as an active protagonist that made an impact on the viewer’s world: the striking use of colour, it appears, was a key medium through which this impact could be made.

FINISH Colour ‘finishes’ off a piece of sculpture. It endows a further, final layer of meaning to the form of the sculpture, and allows the various characteristics of the marble to be developed and expressed with greater sophistication. This is the emphasis placed by most of the literary evidence that survives for the use of

436 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE colour on ancient statuary. In a play distinguished by its subtle use of sculpture imagery and the blurring of boundaries between image and reality, Euripides’ Helen bewails her legendary beauty, and wishes she had been wiped clean as if she were a statue (exaleiphtheis’ho¯s agalma), and made plain instead of beautiful: the Euripidean metaphor suggests a figure in the round that had been embel- lished and given character by a layer of colour, and whose surface appearance could be whitewashed and repainted less beautifully.42 In a similar vein, the second-century polymath Lucian provides a good example of what, from one ancient perspective, colour can do for a work of art. The essential interaction between form, material and colour (and the role of colour in disguising materi- ality) is neatly demonstrated by this discussion of the final stages in the preparation of the ‘ideal’ statue. Here, Lucian’s statue is complete, all except for the finish (Imagines 7–8):

[This final ingredient is] not the most unimportant, my friend, unless you will maintain that perfection of form is but little enhanced by its skin (chroa) and appropriateness in each detail, so that precisely those parts will be dark that should be dark, and those bright which should be, and the blush will bloom upon the surface and so forth. I fear we will stand in need of the most important feature! . . . let Polygnotos do the becomingness of her brows and the blush of her cheeks . . . and let him also render her clothing to the most delicate texture . . . the rest of the body let Apelles represent . . . not too white but just diffused with blood . . . let her be throughout of a colour like that which Homer gave to the thighs of Menelaos when he likened them to ivory tinged with purple and let him also paint (grapsato¯) the eyes and make her ‘ox-eyed’. The Theban poet [Pindar], too, shall lend him a hand in the work, to give her ‘violet brows’. Yes, and Homer shall make her ‘laughter-loving’ and ‘bright- armed’ and ‘rosy-fingered’ . . .

Lucian’s Imagines playfully explores the dialogic relationship between sculpture and poetic ekphrasis.43 In this excerpt, the speaker Polystratus points out that a statue and any claims to poetic expression are unfinished unless chroa – a skin or layer – is applied. This ‘skin’ mediates the capacity of the stone to reproduce the figure the sculptor is imitating. That this ‘finish’ is a delicate and subtle process, designed to bring the work of art to life, is paraded by Lucian’s exploitation of the colour cliche´s of Greek verse: ‘becomingness’, ‘faint flush’, ‘delicate texture’, faint diffusion of blood, the crimsoned ivory legs of Menelaos, ‘ox-eyes’, violet brows, and so on, toy with concepts of colour rooted not only in other areas of sensation and objects, but also in other literary and artistic traditions. All these finishing touches that enrich the meaning of the subject matter are dependent on the application of colour. An ancient statue without colour, then, is like a mannequin without clothes.44 One further aspect of the use of colour as a finish for sculpture is that it gives the subject matter another interpretative layer for the art historian to consider. In particular, it allows the artist – and the viewer – to distinguish particular features of the image that lend the subject matter definition and distinction. In Eclogue 7, Virgil has a character promise a statue to Diana made out of polished marble (leui de marmore), her ankles bound with scarlet (punicei) buskins: here, the colour marks a special and defining honour for the statue’s dedication. In the Catalepton, the poet promises Venus, if she will let him finish his Trojan epic not just incense

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 437 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE and a painted tablet (picta tabella) to decorate her temple, but also a marble statue of a winged Cupid, his quiver painted, as is the custom, with wings of a thousand colours (mille colores); this suggests that there were typologies of paint appropriate for individual subjects.45 Furthermore, some of the pigments that were regularly used on high-grade sculpture (malachite, azurite, cinnabar, Egyptian blue) were worth their weight in gold and it is likely that connoisseurs would be trained to identify and appreciate the cost and value of certain pigments that were used, just as they were trained to recognize the material out of which the sculpture was carved.46 There is some reason to believe, at least for the most important and expensive works of sculpture, that a separate professional was commissioned to ‘finish’ off what the sculptor had started, once the sculpture had been set up in position.47 In a frequently cited passage of book 35 of the Natural History, Pliny the Elder discusses the aesthetic tastes of the sculptor Praxiteles who, when asked which marble works he thought most highly of, replied those that the painter Nicias had worked on, since he valued the process of applying paint (circumlitio) to statues so highly.48 Plutarch, in his treatise On the glory of the Athenians, compares tragic actors to the painters, gilders and dyers of statues; like these, tragic actors put the finishing touches to the plays they perform.49 There is some evidence that professionals called ‘polishers’ (Latin politores) existed, who developed sophisti- cated methods to achieve subtle finishes for gems, ivories and marbles.50 Indeed ‘polishing’ provided a convenient classical metaphor for finishing and refining diverse features of ancient life: agriculture, clothes, speech, literature, moral stature and physical appearance, as well as works of art, were all ‘polished’ in order to achieve refinement and perfection.51 The application of colour to marble sculpture, then, was an integral part of the finishing process. The adjective ‘marble’ (marmareos/marmoreus) described not a raw lump of rock, but a shaped, crafted, polished work of art.52 Part of a sculptural ‘polish’ might also include preservative coatings applied to the marble, as well as varnishes, patinas, glazes, colour sheens, highlights and metal attachments. Furthermore, we should expect that many sculptures were periodically restored and repainted in order to restore colours that had faded or been damaged, and it is by no means certain that they were always restored in the same way.53 Indeed, there is probably very little to tell between the various coats of polish and coats of paint on Roman marble. Across antiquity, marble surfaces were artificially enhanced by a process called ganosis, in which a layer of melted wax mixed with olive oil was applied, which both protected the underlying marble and enhanced the brilliance of painted surfaces.54 It seems likely that ganosis was applied to sculptural surfaces on a regular (in some cases annual) basis, and it was probably a standard part of restoration projects.55 Ganosis was perhaps one of a number of available surface treatments which modified the appearance of underlying colours. Pliny describes Apelles’ use of atramentum (35.97) as a finish for his paintings, a dark preservative/varnish applied so thinly that it threw up the brilliance of all the colours (claritates colorum omnium excitaret) while toning down and giving ‘sombreness’ (austeritas) to those that were too garish (floridi): the effect, he adds, was similar to that of looking through tinted glass (lapis spec- ularis).56 ‘Finishing’ the artistic medium, then, was a highly complex technical process which highlighted and enhanced the underlying material.

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What is needed, then, is a more sophisticated understanding of the rela- tionship between ‘colour’ and ‘material’: one must avoid the assumption that colour was applied in a way that disre- garded the underlying material.57 The sophisticated polishes and patinas docu- mented in contemporary literature and epigraphy, and the complex mineral layers identified on certain pieces of sculpture, should be considered as evidence for a more nuanced use of polychromy on classical sculpture than is sometimes suggested by modern recon- structions. The Prima Porta Augustus, unlike its painted plaster cast, was carved out of an expensive block of Parian lych- nites, and must have integrated colours into its translucent surfaces so that the marble’s special properties were comple- mented by the pigments that brought it ‘to life’ (see below pp. 447–50). Although Carrara rather than Parian, the painted marble replica of the Ny Carlsberg Glyp- totek Caligula (see plate 9) is more successful in this respect. The refraction of light entering through the paint layer from the crystalline structures of the marble has a significant effect on the clarity and depth of the colours, so that 12 J. Gibson, Tinted Venus, 1851–1856. Marble, the pigments do not merely sit on the height 175 cm. The skin is lightly tinted to surface of the sculpture. Furthermore, give warmth to the marble, and the eyes, some pigments – such as cinnabar – hair, apple, tortoise and hem of the robe are penetrate the surface of the marble, so fully coloured. Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery that they sit in the stone rather than on (inv. WAG7808). Photo: National Museums it: this may have served, for example, to Liverpool. ‘suffuse’ a skin pigment laid on the surface of the cheeks in a highly subtle and realistic way. Surface finishing may have further enriched this effect: in particular, the ‘encaustic’ technique (that of applying colour mixed with hot wax to a polished surface) served to preserve and enhance the translucent quality of the marble.58 However, still very little is known about the nature of ancient expertise in painting sculpture (unlike expertise in marble sculpting), and it is perhaps to the fine but imaginative reconstructions of the nineteenth century that we must turn to best visualize the potential for the professional deployment of coloured finishes on marble statuary. John Gibson, whose celebrated Tinted Venus (plate 12) caused a sensation when it was displayed at the London International Exhibition of 1862 for its strikingly realistic nudity, defended his decision to colour his piece with the argument that

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‘a cold white statue would . . . have appeared incomplete to that people [the Greeks]’.59

REALISM Viewers in the modern West are conditioned both to expect and to accept monochrome marble figures with white hair, white skin and white eyeballs. This is – in part – a consequence of neo-classical aesthetics: some of the most iconic and memorable items of post-medieval sculpture display unblemished white marble surfaces.60 And yet this is an artistic aesthetic that (at face value) is categorically abstract and incongruous with the principles of classical realism. A monochrome marble figure fractures the fundamental relationship between art and reality: a white statue of Augustus does not populate the world of the living. Colour, then, circumvents this problem. Colour provides the finish that brings the sculpture to life, that produces – as they could sometimes be described in a range of ancient discourses – ‘living images’ on the ambiguous line between the real and the imaginary (Greek zo¯a or Latin spirantia signa, to take two suggestive categories).61 Public statues ‘intermingled’ with the world of the living, and painted relief sculpture could be seen to recreate mythic scenes that were so lifelike that viewers believed they had really happened.62 In the third or fourth century CE, Kallistratos described the preparation of a Parian marble statue of a Maenad in such a way as to render it almost alive and depart from the law (nomos) that normally governs stone: ‘what one saw was really an image, but art (techne¯) carried imitation (mime¯sis) over into reality’.63 This idea had also been explored by Plato: a section of the Republic comparing the correctly painted statue to the correctly organized state draws attention to the role of colour in achieving mimesis:

It is as if someone were to approach us as we were painting a statue and criticize us, saying that we did not apply the most beautiful pigments to the most beautiful parts of the image. For the eyes, which are the most beautiful part have not been painted with purple but with black. We should reasonably reply to him, ‘My dear friend, do not expect us to paint the eyes so fine that they will not be like eyes at all, nor the other parts, but observe whether or not by assigning what is appropriate (ta prose¯konta) to each part, we make the whole beautiful’.64

Ancient discussions of art tended to lay great emphasis on the controlled and sober use of ‘correct’ pigments for imitation and representation.65 For contem- porary philosophers, paints were artificial surfaces and therefore any connection with the underlying object was arbitrary; the sheer diversity of artificial paints, pigments and dyes exacerbated this difficulty, and the threat it posed to the relationship between perception and understanding. Artistic and poetic colours were sometimes considered incompatible: qualities of colour in Greek verse such as ‘rosy-fingered’ (rhododaktulos), for example, could hardly be reproduced by the painter using ‘rose dye’ (rhodeon chro¯ma).66 One solution to the logical problem posed by paints was to aim to use the ‘correct’ colour (so, in crude terms, make art ‘veristic’). Thus Plato’s analogy between the painting of a statue and the organi- zation of the state draws attention to the importance of applying the correct colours to the correct parts of the image.67 The accurate alignment of artistic

440 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE colours with the categories of poetic ekphrasis was also a central concern of Lucian’s account of the painting of the ‘ideal statue’ at Imagines 7–8 (above p. 437). This emphasis on using the proper colours in art, on imitating, copying and reproducing visible physical objects, goes some way to explaining the intensity of the Greco-Roman debate on mixing and on using pure colours.68 This is one of the reasons why the simple four- colour palette (connected by some to the elemental tetrads of early Greek philosophy or the four humours of Hippocratic medicine) was so warmly embraced by a range of ancient moral and philosophical writers, with simple colours and colour-mixtures corresponding straightforwardly and accurately to the objects that were 13 Reconstruction of the bronze head of a boy being represented.69 The artist was an with a victor’s fillet, c. CE 20. Munich: Staatliche ‘imitator’ (mime¯te¯s), and his objective Antikensammlung und Glyptothek (inv. 457). . was to replicate a head, eyes, hair, Photo: Renate Kuhling. tunic, weapons using appropriate and realistic colours. Great effort was applied to correlating appropriate colours with the subject matter of the sculpture. The marble statue of ‘Venus in Bikini’ from Pompeii shows the goddess, her pale skin represented by the largely unpainted white marble, with jewellery and skimpy accoutrements represented by gilding and metal ornamentation applied directly on to the marble.70 Silver alloys could be used to evoke the pallid flesh of female subjects or figures that were dying, and bronze was regularly used to render the tanned flesh of nude gods, athletes or warriors.71 The first-century BCE bronze seated boxer at the Museo Nazionale Romano (inv. 1055) has copper inlays inserted into grooves and channels across his body, reproducing dripping blood and bruising after his fight.72 Indeed, recent scholarship has drawn attention to the realism and sophistication of chromatic variegation in bronze statuary (plate 13), as well as its evaluation in classical ekphrasis.73 This emphasis on the accurate representation of life pervades a wide range of classical art. Pliny the Elder comments (Natural History 35.4) that the painting of portraits (imaginum pictura) was the traditional means by which Roman art could transmit through the ages the closest likenesses of people’s faces, although he complains that this practice had by his time died out so that imagines had become homogenized and stereotyped. The use of clay models some- times attested in the production of sculpture (including the technique of ‘casting from life’), as well as the ancestral portraits that lined the atrium of aristocratic Roman houses, point to the importance of preserving precise features

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 441 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE in representations.74 Painted masks were also used in ancient theatre, their colours rigidly schematized so that particular character-types possessed the facial colours that typically defined them (red-haired barbarian slave, pale noblewoman, tanned peasant, etc.).75 This principle of colour-coding to reproduce (and rein- force) a stereotyped reality is a defining characteristic of many items of painted marble sculpture: tanned warriors, pale females, red-haired barbarians, and so on.76 This argument that sculptural colours were ‘coded’ to represent reality (or at least a version of reality) is quite different from that adopted by Elena Walter- Karydi that coloristic effects were what really mattered in painting sculpture.77 It also differs from Valentina Manzelli’s argument (rooted in various strands of anthropological enquiry) that seeks layers of ‘colour symbolism’ in the choice of colours: black/blue as a celestial and male colour versus red as a chthonic and female colour, for example.78 ‘Colour symbolism’ implies that colours exist in their own right, independently of the objects which they qualify. An interpreta- tion of sculptural polychromy in which colour is an extension of the underlying form, on the other hand, highlights the use of colour to qualify, identify and enrich the subject to which it is applied. This is not to say that sculptural colour straightforwardly reproduces reality: bold, super-natural colours could underwrite the ambiguity often inherent to representations of the human form in-the-round, an interpretation persuasively applied by Richard Gordon to Greco- Roman sculpture.79 The use of colour as a tool for artistic mimesis provides one explanation for the relative paucity of literary evidence on the practice. It was not the norm, we must assume, to talk about the painting of sculpture as if it were a separate and special part of the production process. Literary references were made to outstanding features of colour (Diana’s scarlet buskins, for example, or Cupid’s thousand-coloured quiver), special uses of pigments, or to an artist’s unusual attention to this particular aspect of sculpting (Pliny on Praxiteles), but the customary colouring of sculptural features rarely elicited comment. Further- more, there was no straightforward chromatic register available with which to describe painted surfaces (there was no Greek or Latin equivalent to ‘pink’, ‘red’, ‘brown’, etc.). Ancient thinkers (and particularly those concerned with optics) generally considered colour (chro¯ma or color) to be the primary object of sight, formulated as the surface (or ‘what is visible’) of an object, rather than a separate entity that existed in its own right.80 Mimesis, then, was an intrinsic concern in the production of classical art, and the idea that every object should have its proper, telltale colour was an axiom of ancient thought.

TROMPE-L’OEIL A classical landscape of painted statues probably had more in common with a waxworks museum than the high art of a modern cast gallery. Indeed, the aesthetic of trompe-l’oeil (‘trick of the eye’) – whereby the object represented participates in the world occupied by the viewer – is one logical consequence of artistic mimesis, and one for which the use of colour, and all the various surfaces and attachments outlined above, was integral. Colour, therefore, disguised the materiality of the sculpture and by doing so obscured the line between art and reality. The result was a second population within the ancient city, intermingling

442 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE with the living and sharing their iconography, values and history. The possibi- lities, uncertainties and discomfort generated by this ambiguity between art and life provided a fertile ground for exploration in a wide range of artistic and literary discourses.81 Representations of sculpture in ancient painting, and particularly the rich wall-paintings of Pompeii and other key Roman sites, offer a rich source of information about the appearance, context and distribution of ancient sculp- ture.82 And yet, it can sometimes be very difficult to distinguish a statue from a living figure in an ancient artistic representation. A small handful of examples can be cited which unambiguously appear to depict statues, either because of their position in the scene, or because a statue is in the process of being completed, or because it exhibits characteristics that are ‘statuesque’, such as a statue base, miniature dimensions, stiff pose or manifestly material features. On the whole, however, images of classical statues tended to force the viewer to question whether the figure was real or artificial. The ambiguous representation of figures was in fact a primary motif in all styles of Pompeian wall-painting; plate 14 shows a female painter, herself a figure in a framed painting, comparing a painted statue – perhaps Priapus – to a framed painting at her feet (which of the two she is about to paint is left deliberately unclear). Ambiguous figural art was a particular characteristic of garden-paintings, in which painted statues stared back as if they might at any moment spring to life.83 The degree to which statues in these paintings faithfully reproduce the appearance, position and reception of real statues is the subject of some debate, although it must be taken as axiomatic that the painters were exploiting and parading an existing sculptural aesthetic that challenged the division between art and life.84 To a certain extent, these representations belonged to the provocative realm of illu- sionism in which the artist could deploy and explore creative uses of stance, weight, material and colour. Take, for example, the painting of the statue of Mars in the House of Venus Marina at Pompeii (see plate 15).85 This armed figure, nude apart from a red cloak that hangs down his back, is predominantly white (presumably an indication of the marble out of which the statue is carved), although the features of his face are painted. With the skin coloration and the pedestal, he is clearly intended to look like a real garden statue, and yet his helmet plume is organic and unstatuesque, and the figure stands in contrapposto, tilting to its right so far without props or struts that a real stone statue could not stand upright.86 By merging the statuesque and the lifelike in this way, then, the painter presented a playful and provocative interplay of art and life. Another example of such representational ambiguity is the six ‘pilaster’-herms of satyrs and maenads that form part of the painted architecture in the House of the Cryptoporticus (VI.17.42): statuesque as they are, rooted fast in their architectural scaffolding, the delicately painted faces with their wispy realistic hair stare out at the viewer as if they were living.87 Indeed, Campanian art is rife with ambiguous repre- sentations of statuesque figures. Of course, in order to evoke this ambiguity between art and life, the painter needed to capture elements of the statuesque as much as he used the palette to bring his figures to life.88 It is not enough simply to say that the painted statue imitated (and interchanged with) reality: the materiality of art constituted a visual discourse in itself, and the theme of the

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14 Wall-painting from the House of the Surgeon, Pompeii VI.1.10, showing a female painter observing a framed painting and a painted statue (c.CE 55–79). Naples: Museo Archeologico Nazionale (inv. 9018). Photo: Soprain- tendenza Archeologica di Pompeii.

15 Detail of wall-painting showing Statue of Mars in the House of Venus Marina at Pompeii (II.3.3). Photo: Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompeii.

444 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE fantastical that transcended both art and reality was a familiar playing field in the domain of wall-painting.89 One specific context in which sculpture functioned explicitly as a substitute for the real thing, and therefore in which ambiguities be- tween art and reality had a highly fertile ground for formation and exploitation, was the representation of cult statues.90 Statues of divinities were erected inside shrines and temples both embodying and stand- ing in proxy for the gods who were supposed to live there, and it is unsur- prising to find that literary accounts frequently elide the distinction be- tween deity and image of deity, and visual representations of cult statues within sacred buildings (on coins, vases and wall-paintings, for example) 16 Apulian terracotta column-krater (bowl for 91 creatively exploit these ambiguities. mixing wine and water), c. 360–350 BCE, showing It is sometimes difficult to decide an artist painting a lion-skin on a marble statue whether it is the statue that is being of Heracles. One of his assistants is heating a described or depicted, or the divinity charcoal brazier, suggesting the use of the itself. In some representations, this encaustic technique. New York: Metropolitan very difficulty of distinguishing art Museum of Art (Rogers Fund, 1950 (50.11.4)). from reality is playfully explored and Photo: r Metropolitan Museum of Art. paraded by the image: a well-known fourth-century BCE Apulian column- krater (plate 16) depicts an artist painting the lion-skin of an unpainted statue of Heracles while the real Heracles looks on, inviting an expectation that the statue will be identical to the hero himself when the painter has completed his task.92 Once a cult statue is painted, clothed, armed and garlanded, it creates the impression of the real god or hero standing around in the city and participating in human life. At the same time, such representations could never be straightfor- wardly ‘naturalistic’: gods and heroes existed in the ancient mind as figures both reminiscent of mortals and at the same time fundamentally distinct from them. They were often larger-than-life and exhibited certain characteristics that one might term ‘unnaturalistic’: bold intense colours, for example, or a radiant glow produced by reflective materials like gold, marble and ivory and manipulated by reflective pools, polished floors, or lighting and shadow inside temples.93 In addi- tion, an interpretation of sculptural polychromy based on ‘realism’ need not be static, reductivist or unilinear: one must accept that meaning was born out of a dialogue between object and viewer and that multiple interpretations were possible.94 This playful (and sometimes provocative) oscillation between the sculpture and the living figure represented by the sculpture was a well-established literary

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 445 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE topos, and the notion that a master sculptor could bring his subject literally to life was a familiar motif in the classical imagination. Hephaestus and Daedalus created figures out of clay and metal with such skill that they came to life, mythological prototypes for a long list of Greco-Roman stories about ‘living statues’.95 The eroticism of classical sculpture is a familiar playing-field for art-historical discussion: the phenomenon of ‘agalmatophilia’ is most evoca- tively represented by the story of the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with an ivory statue he has made, and after prayers to Aphrodite the statue turns to flesh and comes alive.96 In the third century, the Elder Philostratus wrote several Imagines (‘descriptions of images’) which playfully animated the sculptural figures he was describing. One of these (2.1) concerned a painting in which a statue of Venus was depicted: Philostratus evokes the painter’s skill by treating the image of the sculpture as an image of the goddess herself—‘the goddess does not want to seem painted, but she stands out as though one could seize her’. The implication is that colour was the medium by which the skilled artist could blur the distinction between art and reality.

SCULPTURAL POLYCHROMY BEYOND THE CLASSICAL The deployment of colour on sculpture to blur, confuse or collapse the distinction between art and life is by no means the artistic preserve of ancient Greece and Rome. The story of ancient polychrome sculpture is one that is embedded in patterns of sculptural representation in the Mediterranean from Pharaonic Egypt to the Greco-Roman and Byzantine worlds, through Medieval Europe and the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and which continues to perform a significant and polyvalent role in the modern world. In 2008, the J. Paul Getty Museum hosted an exhibition called ‘The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present’, which juxtaposed many of the painted classical reconstructions that had been displayed in exhibitions across Europe and America since 2003 to a wide variety of medieval and modern polychrome sculptures. This exhibition demonstrated above all the role of colour in nego- tiating the complex interplay between sculptural art and life.97 Evidence from Eastern art suggests that the use of polychrome sculpture to animate artistic form was not restricted to the aesthetic discourses of the West: the 8,099 figures of the celebrated terracotta army buried (c. 210 BCE) with the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, for example, were originally intricately painted to be as lifelike as possible and carried real weapons, to give the appearance of a real army guarding the emperor’s body.98 In addition, Indian, ancient Near-Eastern and Egyptian sculp- tures are also observed to have been brightly painted, so that ancestors, heroes and gods appeared to participate in the world of the living.99 Polychrome sculpture in the ancient Mediterranean has informed and influ- enced a wide variety of medieval and modern art and architecture, in Europe and beyond. Even the leading Renaissance sculptors who are credited with estab- lishing an aesthetic of monochrome sculpture sometimes produced polychrome pieces: Michelangelo, for example, produced Crucifix (Florence: Santo Spirito, 1492–94), a lifelike painted wooden figure of Christ on the cross, Donatello produced a number of statues using painted features and gilding to render them more realistic, and it is known that Bernini’s celebrated marble and travertine

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Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (1648–51) in Piazza Navona had certain features painted by the artist Guidubaldo Abbatini, although no traces survive today.100 Recent years have seen a great deal of art-historical interest in Romanesque and Gothic cathedral architecture, and major laser-cleaning projects have led to a radical reinterpretation of the striking role of sculptural polychromy on cathedrals such as those at Amiens, Poitiers and Notre-Dame, not only for internal sculpture, but also on their monumental facades. It has long been observed that wooden and stone sculpture inside medieval European churches was often elaborately painted, so that it appeared that the painted figures were staring inwards at the congregation, in the same way that figures on classical frieze and pedimental sculpture stared outwards at passers-by.101 Furthermore, the proliferation of wax museums with their coloured death-masks and life-like figurines since the late eighteenth century also emerged out of earlier practice: wax votive offerings in medieval churches around Europe, wax masks preserving the features of monarchs and nobles, and wax moulage for reproducing the internal organs of the body in various Renaissance anatomical schools. The idea of painted representations coming to life, an established theme in classical discourses, has also inspired a number of modern artistic, literary and dramatic stories: reinterpretations of Pygmalion, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, and countless novels and films in the genre of horror bring dummies, wax statues or inanimate figures to life (both generating and feeding off a range of modern psycho- logical disorders related to the reproduction of the human form). Of course, in each of these contexts, sculptural polychromy performs various complex functions, and it would be a mistake to impose on to all of them a single privi- leged interpretation of the role of colour. This said, the ambiguous line between figural art and life, and the critical role of colour in negotiating that line, is embedded in many areas of Western culture. Many of these practices and discourses, it can now be convincingly argued, found their inspiration in the art of classical antiquity.

ENVOI: THE PRIMA PORTA AUGUSTUS REVISITED I have argued that colour performed a fundamental role in transforming the appearance and impression of ancient marble sculpture: it made the sculpture more visible, legible and striking, it finished the marble in such a way as to produce subtle and sophisticated effects, it transformed the sculpture into a realistic representation of life, and allowed the artist to blur the distinction between art and life. Furthermore, coloured reconstructions of marble sculpture need no longer be arbitrary or tribute to an art historian’s imagination: recent research has allowed us to make serious advances in the study of particular pieces of ancient sculpture. With this in mind, this article will conclude with a ‘test-run’ of some of the ideas and principles surrounding sculptural polychromy applied to the analysis of a single piece of ancient sculpture: the Prima Porta Augustus. With extensive pigments so accurately identified and precisely reconstructed, the art historian cannot and should not look at the Prima Porta Augustus in the same way again. Colour transforms the statue on artistic, iconographic and psychological grounds. The Prima Porta Augustus is a 2.04 m high marble statue of the emperor which was discovered in the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, nine miles outside Rome.

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It is an example of exquisite workmanship in Parian marble, a brilliant stone imported from the Aegean and long valued for its fine grain and translucency.102 Perhaps commissioned in CE 15 after Augustus’ death, the statue is believed to be a marble replica of a bronze original that was voted to Augustus by the Senate in 20 BCE and set up in public space at Rome. It appears to show Augustus as a victorious general making a speech, carrying an object (perhaps a spear, now lost) in his left hand and stretching out his right hand in a gesture of adlocutio.He poses in contrapposto, with his right leg extended forward and his left leg bent and heel slightly raised: the artist has captured him in medias res. His cuirass depicts various deities, including the emperor’s patron deity Apollo, along with the personifications of the territories he has recently conquered: Hispania, Gaul, Germania and – most importantly – Parthia (or the Parthian king Phraates IV), who is shown returning the stolen standards to a Roman commander (Tiberius, perhaps). At the top of the cuirass, various cosmic deities (normally identified as Caelus, Sol and Aurora) illuminate Augustus’ achievements, and at the bottom Tellus, holding a cornucopia, underwrites the prosperity and resources that the emperor has brought to Rome. At the right heel of the statue, a small Cupid riding a dolphin parades the genealogical link between the Julian family and Venus. The statue displays a series of thinly veiled references to Augustus’ divine qualities (in CE 14 he was officially deified by the state): the bare feet, the larger-than-life frame, the juxtaposition of Cupid, the idealized Apolline features of his face. By merging Classical and Hellenistic heroic qualities with Roman military and political prowess and achievement, the statue celebrates the emperor’s exceptional role as champion of pax Romana, and at the same time cosmocrat over the civilized world, a figure worthy of being raised to the level of the Olympic deities.103 So much for the significance of the Prima Porta’s sculpted detail, which is well-trodden territory in discussions of Roman art and the Augustan ‘power of images’. But what of the colour? Perhaps because of its relatively late discovery in 1863, and the conditions in which it was preserved, the Prima Porta Augustus retained many visible traces of colour on its clothing, hair and details of the eyes and the armour.104 In the heyday of nineteenth-century art-historical interest in sculptural polychromy, it inspired a number of colourful reconstructions, the most significant being that of Ludwig Fenger in 1886.105 Following a careful cleaning in 1999 which brought back to light many traces of colour that had faded, the Vatican Museums, led by Paolo Liverani, systematically identified and documented traces of six or seven across the original artefact, allowing – at least on a technical level – the most accurate reconstruction yet to be made using a plaster cast (plate 1). How, then, can this reconstruction enrich our interpretation of the original artefact? There can be no doubt that the painted Prima Porta Augustus was a striking addition to Livia’s villa.106 At 2.04 metres it was – just about – larger-than-life, its claim to ‘naturalism’ already provocatively challenged by its godlike stature. But the colours applied to its surfaces carried this ambiguity one step further, simultaneously asserting and denying that the statue was alive: the expensive pigments used (particularly red cinnabar and Egyptian blue) were both fast and loud, making the artefact – like many painted classical statues of heroes and divinities – highly conspicuous, both reproducing the naturalistic colours

448 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE of the emperor’s eyes, hair and clothes, and simultaneously transcending those colours in an expression of divine perspicuity. The cost and value of these pigments were widely acknowledged, and it seems likely that they were chosen precisely because of their prestige and the honour they assigned to the subject. These bold colours distinguished individual features of the statue; no pigments have been identified on the flesh of the Prima Porta, or on the backdrop of the cuirass, and it can be supposed that the individual painted features stood out clearly against this background. Furthermore, a metal rod down the back of the statue, as well as the roughness of carving on the rear, suggests that the statue was displayed against a wall, which itself is likely to have been painted in such a way as to enhance the distinctive features of the piece. Divus Augustus, then, was meant to be noticed, still participating in the world occupied by the viewer but at the same time detached from it by his godlike appearance.107 Furthermore, colour finished the statue so that its constituent parts were executed and expressed in the most evocative and sophisticated ways possible. Colour, sometimes in fairly complex mixtures, furnished the Prima Porta Augustus with distinctive eyes, hair, clothes and accessories. And colour provided an additional – and critical – variable for the interpretation of the piece. The statue’s hair, which has received a great deal of scholarly attention from the point of view of portrait identification and Hellenistic idealization, was coated with a reddish-brown pigment, and is perhaps the one feature of the Liverani reconstruction that has been received with the greatest surprise and scepti- cism.108 According to Suetonius, Augustus’ hair was ‘bordering on blond’ (subflauus); quite what constituted ‘blond’ in ancient Italy is a matter of some debate, but it was a distinctive colour for heroes and divinities, particularly in Augustan literature.109 In particular, it was the colour attributed to Apollo, with whom Augustus had a special connection and who evoked Helios, light, knowledge, truth, purity, the Golden Age, and all those familiar trademarks of Augustan ideology.110 Furthermore, it is significant that the statue’s hair, and particularly its colour, is not that of an old man; post-mortem, Augustus takes on the appearance of youth and divinity. In a similar vein, the absence of any dark pigmentation on the emperor’s flesh may suggest that the artist exploited the natural colour of the stone to render the shine and pallor of Augustus’ skin, another feature that traditionally characterized divine appearance.111 Another significant feature of the Prima Porta statue on which extensive traces of an organic red pigment have been documented is the general’s paludamentum, the scarlet cloak traditionally worn by the imperator on the battlefield.112 Colour was a defining characteristic of this garment, which (along with the cuirass) signals the emperor’s military and political authority. Furthermore, this pigment, which was combined with a transparent lacquer, would have penetrated the crystalline surface of the translucent Parian marble (rather than just sitting on it) and may have caused the thin folds of the paludamentum to glow and catch the viewer’s eye. Traces of Egyptian blue identified on the fringes of Augustus’ tunic most likely represent the purple murex dye that distinguished Roman political authority: in an image that merged so many different aspects of contemporary public life

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009 449 THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR ON ANCIENT MARBLE SCULPTURE and ideology, the juxtaposition of such key schematic Roman colours serves to reinforce the various strands of association and symbolism evoked by the Prima Porta.113 Various pigments identified on the facial hair and garments of the Parthian king on Augustus’ cuirass allowed the artist to distinguish the barbarian’s beard and multicoloured trousers, setting him in sharp cultural contrast to the smooth-shaven Roman commander who is receiving the standards. Colour, then, drew attention to the sculpture’s outstanding physical features. With a nuanced understanding of the cultural importance of blond hair, pale skin or purple garments, then, it allows us to enrich our evaluation and understanding of the work of art. Furthermore, the Prima Porta was an artefact that did not simply elicit a single privileged interpretation at one point in time: there is evidence that the statue underwent at least one restoration in antiquity and – with multiple layers of pigment identified on the fringes of the tunic and on parts of the breastplate – it is likely that it was also repainted using different colours, so that its significance as a work of art and as a representation of Rome’s first emperor was organic, subjective and interactive.114 Finally, in a manner reminiscent of cult statues, colour brought the statue to life, propelling the deceased emperor back into the world of the living. Colour made the statue’s hair hair-coloured, eyes eye-coloured, lips lip-coloured and so on, using a palette that both imitated real life and transcended it by means of its vivid colours. For visitors to Livia’s villa, the statue created the impression that Augustus was watching over them, still participating in their lives in a way that a monochrome statue would not. Although its statue base, bold colours and larger-than-life proportions set the figure apart from mortals and marked it out instantly as a work of art, the idealized, heroicized, triumphant Divus Augustus, with all his features and accoutrements meticulously and appropriately finished off in colour, appeared to onlookers precisely as if he was really there.

Notes This article has developed out of ideas explored in my doctoral thesis ‘Concepts of colour in ancient Rome’ (University of Cambridge, 2004) and my book Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, forthcoming 2009), and developed in papers delivered to the Classics Research Workshop at the University of Nottingham in February 2005 and the University of Texas at Austin in February 2007. Many individuals have influenced and guided my research in this area: in particular, I would like to thank Mary Beard, Vinzenz Brinkmann, Penelope Davies, Paolo Liverani, Robin Osborne and two anonymous Art History readers for their helpful advice and suggestions, and Jan Østergaard and Caroline Vout for their generous help in refining earlier versions of this article. In addition, I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing the funding that has enabled me to complete this work, and to Maria Pia Malvezzi at the British School at Rome for her invaluable assistance with the images. All translations in this paper are my own.

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1 The Amazon head, discovered during the work Polychromie der archaischen und fruhklassischen. of the Herculaneum Conservation Project Skulpturen, Munich, 2003; see also Ridgway, (British School at Rome/Soprintendenza Prayers in Stone, esp. 104–5; 110–14. My forth- Archeologica di Pompeii/Packard Humanities coming monograph Colour and Meaning in Institute), is now on display in the Museo Ancient Rome discusses literary and philoso- Nazionale at Naples. The discovery was phical aspects of colour usage in early imperial reported in The Times (25 March 2006 as ‘Statue Rome. reveals Roman lady with her make-up still on’ 6 For a full nineteenth- and twentieth-century (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509- bibliography on the subject, see Ridgway, 2102022,00.html, accessed October 2008). The Prayers in Stone, 103–7 and Brinkmann, initial exhibitions of painted casts were: Bunte ‘Research in the polychromy of ancient sculp- Go¨tter (Munich Staatliche Antikensammlung ture’. und Glyptothek, 2003–2004); I colori del bianco 7 So Olga Palagia, ed., Greek Sculpture: Function, (Vatican Museums, Rome, 2004); ClassiColor Materials and Techniques in the Archaic and Clas- (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, 2004). sical Periods, Cambridge, 2006, 261 and 275 n. Versions of the display have also been exhibited 82. in , , Istanbul, , 8 Blue pigment was normally used for back- and , and in America as grounds, perhaps (it has been suggested) in Gods in Color (Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 2007– imitation of the sky: for examples and discus- 8) and part of The Color of Life exhibition (J. Paul sion, see Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, esp. 110–11; Getty Museum, 2008). This truly international Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 275 n. 83; Walter- initiative was the first major exhibition of Karydi, ‘The coloring of the relief background sculptural polychromy in over a century. An in Archaic and Classical Greek sculpture’, in important symposium, ‘Rediscovering color: Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 172–7. new perspectives on polychrome sculpture’, 9 Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 261–2 for examples. See was held at the J. Paul Getty Museum at Malibu also Pausanias 10.14.4; 18.7. Further on gilding, in May 2008. On the Winckelmann aesthetic, see Patrik Reutersward,. Studien zur Polychromie see Antonio Pinelli, ‘Winckelmann e il der Plastik: Griechenland und Rom, , problema del bianco’, Archeo Dossier, 29, 1987, 1960, 245–7, who connects the practice in 21–4; Miranda Marvin, The language of the Muses: particular to the Hellenistic ruler cult and the dialogue between Greek and Roman sculpture, associates it in particular with mid- and late- , 2008, c. 6. imperial Roman sculpture; Arnold Lawrence, 2 One significant exception is Brunilde Ridg- Greek and Roman Sculpture, London, 1972, 34–5. way’s essay ‘How: the role of color’ in Prayers in Brigitte Bourgeois and Philippe Jockey, ‘La Stone: Greek Architectural Sculpture ca. 600–100 B.C., dorure des marbres grecs: nouvelle enqueˆte sur Berkeley, 1999, 103–42. la sculpture helle´nistique de De´los’, Journal des 3 On the choice, colour and associations of Savants, 2005, 253–316. For more detail on marbles for ancient sculpture, see Rolf metal attachments, see Ridgway, ‘Metal Schneider, Bunte Barbaren, Worms, 1986; attachments in Greek marble sculpture’, in Marilda De Nuccio and Lucrezia Ungaro, eds, I Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on marmi colorati della Roma imperiale (Exhibition Ancient Sculpture, Malibu, 1990. Catalogue), Rome, 2002; Mark Bradley, ‘Colour 10 For examples, see also Claude Rolley, La sculp- and marble in early imperial Rome’, Proceedings ture grecque (Vol. 1: Des origines au milieu du Ve of the Cambridge Philological Society, 52, 2002, sie`cle), Paris, 1994, 78–81; Palagia, Greek Sculp- 1–22. ture, 262; on inlaid eyes in bronze statues, see 4 On modern techniques for pigment identifica- Carol Mattusch, Classical Bronzes: The ARt and tion and reconstruction, see esp. Vinzenz Craft of Greek and Roman Statuary, Ithaca and Brinkmann, ‘Research in the polychromy of London, 1996, 24 and n. 26 for references. From ancient sculpture: introduction to the exhibi- the principate of Hadrian onwards, the iris, tion’, in Vinzenz Brinkmann and Raimund pupil and eyebrows were usually carved Wunsche,. eds, Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of directly on to the stone, perhaps to provide Classical Antiquity, Munich, 2007, 20–7. For the clearer guidelines for the painter. potential of electronic databases, see Valentina 11 See n. 3. Cf. also Pliny, Natural History 35.3 on Manzelli, La policromia nella statuaria greca the practice under Nero, called lapidem pingere, arcaica, Rome, 1994; cf. Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, of further embellishing coloured marbles by 104–5. painting on additional colours and patterns: 5 Most of the work focuses on the Archaic period, on this, see Bradley, Colour and Meaning, for which the clearest evidence survives: so Cambridge, 2009, c. 3. Elena Walter-Karydi, ‘Prinzipien der arch- 12 So Bernard Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor in aischen Farbgebung’, in Karin Braun and A. Classical Greece, New York, 1972, 60 on the Furtwangler,. eds, Studien zur klassischen Arch- temple of Zeus at Olympia. Cf. also Rolley, La ologie: Festschrift F. Hiller, Saarbrucken,. 1986, sculpture grecque, 82 and Brinkmann, ‘The 23–37; Manzelli, La policromia; Brinkmann, Die funerary monument of Aristion’, in Brink-

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mann and Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 60–5; Temple’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Gods in Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 113 on the Siphnian Color, 70–97. Many of these colour traces faded Treasury at Delphi. rapidly on contact with the air. 13 So Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, 33–4. 24 For details and references, see Palagia, Greek 14 See Brinkmann, ‘Farbigkeit der Terrakotten’, in Sculpture, esp. n. 82 on further recent evidence Friedrich Hamdorf, ed., Hauch des Prometheus: for painted marbles. Meisterwerke in Ton, Munich, 1996, 25–30. 25 On this piece as symptomatic of a fourth- 15 On bronze statuary, see Hermann Born, ‘Multi- century BC development towards a more coloured antique bronze statues’, in Susan La sophisticated palette and a broader cultural Niece and Paul Craddock, eds, Metal Plating and sensitivity to colours in general see Rolley, La Patination: Cultural, Technical and Historical Devel- sculpture grecque, 82; Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, opments, Oxford, 1993, 19–29; Mattusch, ‘Clas- 122–3; Rouveret, ‘Les yeux pourpres: l’expe´ri- sical bronzes’, 24–30; id. (2003) in Brinkmann ence de la couleur dans la peinture classique and Wunsche,. eds, Bunte Go¨tter: die Farbigkeit entre realite´ et fiction’, in Rouveret et al., antiker Skulptur, Munich, 2003, 126–31. See also Couleurs et matie`res, 17–28, esp. 17–24; Bre´cou- Sophie Descamps-Lequime, ‘La polychromie des laki (2006). Further on this idea, see Brink- bronzes grecs et romains’ and Marion Muller- mann, ‘The blue eyes of the Persians: the Dufeu, ‘Les couleurs du bronze dans les statues colored sculpture of the time of Alexander and grecques d’apre`s les descriptions antiques’, in the Hellenistic period’, in Brinkmann and . Agne`s Rouveret et al., eds, Couleurs et matie`res Wunsche, Gods in Color, 150–67 and Heinrich . dans l’antiquite´: texts, techniques et pratiques, Paris, Piening, in Brinkmann and Wunsche, Gods in 2006, 79–102, on ancient artistic mimesis Color, 168–71. concerned with variegated bronze statues. 26 The most important study in the twentieth . 16 For a good summary of classical and post-clas- century was Reutersward, Studien zur Poly- sical chryselephantine sculpture (including chromie, esp. 181–242, who argued for signifi- Egyptian and ancient Near-Eastern ivories), see cant continuities between sculptures in the Kenneth Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Hellenistic East and those in early imperial Ancient Mediterranean World, Oxford, 2001, esp. Rome. For an excellent recent summary, see 19–20. Cf. Pausanias 7.26.4: on ivory ‘decorated Jan Østergaard, ‘Emerging colors: Roman on the surface with gold and colours’. Cf. also sculptural polychromy revived’, in Roberta Carolyn Connor, The Color of Ivory: Polychromy on Panzanelli, ed., The Color of Life: Polychromy in Byzantine Ivories, Princeton, 1998, esp. c. 3 ‘The Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present,Los ancient tradition of polychrome ivories’. Angeles, 2008, 40–61. On a statue of Trajan with a star-studded mantle, see Brigitte Freyer- 17 On evidence for the gilding and colouring Schauenburg, ‘Der Sternenmantel des Kaisers of wood, see Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary, Trajan’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Bunte 19–20. Go¨tter, 212–15; on painted decorative features 18 See Hermann Phelps, Die farbige Architektur bei in the Aula del Colosso in the Forum of den Ro¨mern und in Mittelalter, , 1930. Augustus, see Lucrecia Ungaro and Maria Luisa 19 The limitations of current knowledge about Vitali, ‘Die bemalte Wandverkleidung der ancient sculptural pigments are summarized ‘‘Aula del Colosso’’ im Augustforum’, in Brink- well by Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 107–8. mann and Wunsche,. Bunte Go¨tter,216–18. 20 See Ian Jenkins, ed., Cleaning and Controversy: The Under raking light, faint traces of paint have Cleaning of the Parthenon Sculptures 1811–1939 (BM been detected on the Laocoon sculpture; see Occasional Paper 146), London, 2001; Ridgway, Bernard Andreae, Laokoon und die Grundung Prayers in Stone, 115–18. For a detailed account Roms, Mainz, 1988, esp. plates 13 and 40. of the tests, see Ian Jenkins and Andrew 27 For references and discussion, see pp. 34–41. Middleton, ‘Paint on the Parthenon sculp- 28 On the Copenhagen Caligula, see Jan Øster- tures’, Annual of the British School at Athens,83, gaard, ‘Caligula in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 1988, 183–207. Copenhagen: reconstructing the polychromy of 21 For discussion and references, see Brinkmann, a Roman portrait’, in Brinkmann and ‘Girl or goddess? The riddle of the ‘‘Peplos Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 178–83; Heike Stege et Kore’’ from the Athenian Acropolis’, in Brink- al., ‘Pigment and binding medium analysis of mann and Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 44–53. the polychrome treatment of the marble bust 22 Brinkmann, Die Friese des Siphnierschatzhauses, of a Roman portrait’, in Brinkmann and Munich, 1994; see also Brinkmann ‘The Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 184–5; Brinkmann et weighing of the souls: painted names on the al., ‘The coloration of the Caligula portrait’, in ‘‘Siphnian Treasury’’’, in Brinkmann and Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Gods in Color,186–91. Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 54–9. 29 Most recently, see M. Del Monte et al., Traces of 23 On these and other early discoveries, see ancient colours on Trajan’s column’, Archaeo- Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 105–6; Brinkmann, metry, 40: 2, 1998, 403–12. ‘The prince and the goddess: the rediscovered 30 See Dyfri Williams et al., ‘A virtual Parthenon color on the pediment statues of the Aphaia metope: restoration and colour’, in Brinkmann

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and Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 112–17. Further- Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Bunte Go¨tter, figs. 12, more, Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians 21 vs. 19–20. University, Munich) is undertaking a syste- 40 Virgil, Aeneid 1.586–93. matic project to collect literary resources for 41 This passage imitates Homer, Odyssey 23.156– polychrome sculpture. 63, where Athene imbues Odysseus with divine 31 Although one must expect a certain margin of beauty, although this simile is restricted to the error in these reconstructions: Brinkmann and gilding of silver and there is no mention of the Wunsche,. Bunte Go¨tter, figs 158a–b, 177–8, 242 adornment of ivory or marble. and 247 show different reconstructions of the 42 Euripides, Helen 262–3. For an excellent inter- same sculpture. pretation of sculptural imagery in this play, see 32 For resistance to the intense colours of the Deborah Steiner, Images in Mind: Statues in recent exhibitions, see the responses to Mary Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought, Beard’s blog entry ‘Were ancient statues Princeton, 2002, 54–6, esp. n. 155 where she painted?’ (December 2007) http://timesonline. examines the meaning of these lines. typepad.com/dons_life/2007/12/were-ancient-st. 43 On Lucian’s subversion of the traditional html (accessed November 2008). On develop- philosophical doctrines about sight and ments in sculptural polychromy between the knowedge, see Isabelle Gassino, ‘Voir et savoir: Archaic and the Classical periods see Ridgway, les difficulte´s de la connaissance chez Lucien’, Prayers in Stone, 114; between the Classical in Laurence Villard, ed., Couleurs et vision dans and Hellenistic/Roman periods, Reutersward,. l’antiquite´ classique, Rouen, 2002, 167–77. I have Studien zur Polychromie, esp. 181–242. also discussed this passage in Bradley, ‘Colour 33 Brinkmann, ‘The coloring of Archaic and early and marble’, 17–18. Classical sculpture’, in Brinkmann and 44 See Brinkmann, ‘Armor on the naked skin? The Wunsche,. Gods in Color, 28–43. So also Ridgway, early Classical ‘‘Cuirass-Torso’’ from the Athe- Prayers in Stone, 103–4. nian Acropolis’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche,. 34 See Brinkmann, ‘The prince and the goddess’, Gods in Color, 100–5 on a Classical torso in the . in Brinkmann and Wunsche, Gods in Color, Acropolis Museum at Athens (inv. 599), where 70–97. paint alone distinguishes a muscled cuirass 35 Georg Treu, ‘Die technische Herstellung und from a muscled body. Bemalung der Giebelgruppen am olympischen 45 [Virgil], Catalepton 14.9–10. Mille colores marked Zeustempel’, Jahrbuch des kaiserlich Deutschen out its subject matter as divinely imbued: see Archaeologischen Instituts, 10, 1895, 1–35, esp. 25– Bradley, Colour and Meaning,c.1. 35; cf. Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 83 on the use 46 Brinkmann, ‘Archaic and early Classical sculp- of blue–red contrasts here; cf. Ridgway, Prayers . in Stone, 114–15. ture’, in Brinkmann and Wunsche, Gods in Color, 28–43. So also Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 36 As Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 117–18. Cf. Rolley, 103–4. Theophrastus, De lapidibus and Pliny the La sculpture grecque, 83 on light and dark Elder, Natural History book 35 devote no small materials on the Erechtheum. The use of dark space to identifying and evaluating the limestone for visual contrast in Greek archi- production and economy of individual tecture has been explored by Lucy Shoe, ‘Dark pigments. On shared knowledge and apprecia- stone in Greek architecture’, Hesperia Supple- tion of marble types among the educated ments, vol. 8, 1949, 341–482. metropolitan elite of early imperial Rome, see 37 Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, 34. Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’. Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 126–7 suggests that 47 For several early modern analogies for such the use of colours on architectural back- artistic collaboration, see p. 33. Cf. Palagia, grounds may have been influenced by the stage Greek sculpture, 260–1 on rasps, incisions and sets of the ancient theatre. contours applied to the stone by the sculptor to 38 So Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor, 26. This is assist the work of the painter. also the line adopted by Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 113–14, who argues that colours in the 48 Pliny, Natural History 35.133. Archaic period ‘are not meant to reflect nature 49 Plutarch, De Gloria Atheniensium 6.438E (agal- but to provide contrast and legibility’. Cf. mato¯n egkaustai kai chruso¯tai kai bapheis). Jeremy Tanner, ‘Nature, culture and the body 50 Inscriptiones Italiae 13.2 p. 205, 42, 13; Corpus in Classical Greek religious art’, World Archae- Inscriptionum Latinarum 6.7885 (politor eburarius); ology 33 (‘Archaeology and Aesthetics’), 2001, 6.9462a; 6.9820 6.34374a; 6.37818; 10.6638 C 2, 257–76, esp. 260 on cultural relativism in 17; cf. Firmicus Maternus 4.14.20. naturalistic perceptions of the world. 51 For all references, see the Thesaurus Linguae 39 One should also consider the type of back- Latinae s.v. ‘polior’, ‘politor’, ‘politio’, ‘politus’. ground against which a statue would be Festus P.71M claims that all ancient accom- viewed: the painted backdrop of a Pompeian plishments are called ‘politiones’. For polished house, for example, would make these figures sculpture, see Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.1451; far less startling than (for example) the neutral Pliny, Natural History 36.52; 36.54; 36.152; background of the Munich Glyptothek. See Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4.32.2; Ammianus

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Marcellinus 16.10.8; Prudentius, Contra Symma- 61 So John Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Late chum 1.348; Varro, De re rustica 1.2.10; Cicero, Ad Classical Period and Sculpture in Colonies and Quintum fratrem 3.1.1; Corpus Inscriptionum Lati- Overseas, London, 1995, 11–12; cf. Stewart, narum 1.3025 [Ostia, first century BCE] Statues in Roman Society, 93 on the painting of ‘portic(um) poliend(am). . .curauit’; Vitruvius 7.1.4. statues to imitate life. On the ambiguity of 52 For the aesthetic transformation of polished religious statuary, see Richard Gordon, ‘The marbles, see Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’, 5–8, real and the imaginary: production and reli- 16–18. gion in the Graeco-Roman world’, Art History,2, 53 For example, Brinkmann in Brinkmann and 1979, 5–34, esp. 9–10 on the ambiguity of the Wunsche,. Bunte Go¨tter, 40. Multiple layers of language in which ancient statuary was colour have been detected on the stele of Aris- described. For zo¯on see Herodotus 3.88; Plato, togeiton and on the fringes of the Prima Porta Republic 515a. For spirantia signa see Virgil, statue. Repainting perhaps also assisted in the Georgics 3.34; Aeneid 6.847; Arnobius 6.16; cf. reuse of marble spolia for new sculptural Martial 7.84.2 (spirat et arguta picta tabella manu); programmes, by smoothing over joins and Propertius 2.31.7 on Myron’s statue group: permitting the expression of new features: e.g. quattuor artifices, uiuida signa, boues. the Hadrianic roundels of the Arch of 62 Ashmole, Architect and Sculptor,65. Constantine. For evidence of cleaning and 63 Kallistratos, Imagines 2.4. treating, see Inscriptiones Graecae 4.840; Pliny, Natural History 34.99; Pausanias 1.15.4; cf. 64 Plato, Republic 4.420C. Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis 395.2–4. 65 For references and discussion of colour in 54 On ‘ganosis’, see Vitruvius 7.9.3–4; Pliny, Greek art within a philosophical context, see Natural History 33.122; Plutarch, Natural Ques- Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 2. Cf. Rouveret et tions 287D; Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, al., Couleurs et matie`res, for essays exploring 35–6; Manzelli, La policromia, 101–15, 278; various aspects of colour in artistic ekphrasis. Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 82; Palagia, Greek 66 So Ion of Chios (at Ath. 13.603E). Further on Sculpture, 260–1. For a concise survey of the this poetic–artistic distinction, see James (1995) surface finishing of Greek statues, see Andrew 62–3. Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration,New 67 Further on this passage, see Rouveret, ‘Les yeux Haven, 1990, 40–2. See also John Pollini et al., pourpres’, 23. This idea recurs in Plato at Parian lychnites and the Prima Porta statue: new Republic 2.377E; 586B-C; cf. Cratylus 424E–425B. scientific tests and the symbolic value of the 68 On this idea, see Philostratus, Imagines 1.2; cf. marble’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 11, 1998, Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales 725C. 275–84 on the Prima Porta Augustus. 69 On the four-colour palette, see Bradley, Colour 55 Plutarch, Moralia 74E. and Meaning, c. 2; Charikleia Bre´coulaki, 56 This passage is discussed in detail in Ernst ‘Conside´rations sur les peintres te´tra- Gombrich, ‘Dark varnishes, variations on a chromatistes et les couleurs austeri et floridi’, in theme from Pliny’, Burlington Magazine, 104, Rouveret et al., Couleurs et matie`res, 29–42. 1962, 51–5. Cf. Vitruvius 7.7.1 on sil (a form of 70 See for example Stewart, Statues in Roman ‘yellow’ earth), regularly used for the politio of Society, 247. Cf. Reutersward,. Studien zur Poly- Greco-Roman sculpture. chromie, 245–7. 57 On the importance of the aesthetics of the 71 So Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales 5.1.2 (with underlying stone even when it was painted, see Boardman, Greek Sculpture, 12) on the use of Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’, esp. 10–11. On silvered bronze to express the wasting expres- Praxiteles as a pioneer for the use of white marble for female nudes, see Boardman, Greek sion of a dying Jocasta. The hair of bronze Sculpture, 13. See Reutersward,. Studien zur Poly- heads was often darkened with pigments. chromie, 242–3 on subtle techniques for sculp- 72 For discussion and further references, see tural skin-toning using wax coatings. Rolley, La sculpture grecque,80–1. 58 I thank Jan Østergaard for drawing my atten- 73 Mattusch, Classical bronzes, 24–30 provides a tion to these possibilities. On the encaustic good outline of the various effects of bronze technique, see Palagia, Greek Sculpture,261. sculpture. Cf. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes 28.3 59 See Elizabeth Eastlake, The Life of John Gibson, comparing a boxer’s skin-colour to that of well- R.A., Sculptor, London, 1870, 212; also on the blended bronze. Pliny, Natural History 34.98 on Tinted Venus, see Panzanelli, Color of Life, 164. a bronze alloy mixed with Cypriot copper to For other examples of nineteenth-century render purple borders on the robes of statues. reconstructions, see Wunsche. (2004) in Cf. 34.140 on bronze imbued with rusting iron Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Bunte Go¨tter, 10–23, to create the effect of shame. esp. figs 4, 7–10. 74 On models in clay, plaster, wax and wood, see 60 A contrast observed by Peter Stewart, Statues in Palagia, Greek Sculpture, 262–3. Pliny, Natural Roman Society: Representation and Response, History 35.153 discusses the sculptor Lysistratos’ Oxford, 2003, 37, and Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, creation of ‘life masks’ in plaster for the 103–4. production of bronze portraits. He goes on

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(155–6) to describe plaster models used for 90 The provocative ambiguity of Greco-Roman Roman statuary. cult statues has been comprehensively 75 See David Wiles, Masks of Menander: Sign and explored by Gordon, ‘The real and the Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance, imaginary’; for the relationship between Cambridge, 1991, esp. 74–80, 129–49 on recog- naturalism and culture in Archaic and Clas- nized typologies of dramatic masks based on sical Greek cult statuary, see Tanner, ‘Nature, schematic hair and skin colours. On colour- culture and the body’; on Roman cult statues, coding in physiognomy and its relationship to see Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, c. 6.; Jas theatre masks, see Bradley, Colour and Meaning, Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in c. 5. Art and Text, Princeton, 2007, 247–51. . 76 See Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 83 and Ridgway, Reutersward, Studien zur Polychromie, 243 argues Prayers in Stone, 285–90 on painted Archaic that cult statues (as distinct from ‘decorative’ statues) present the most intense and unam- fragments in the Persian depot on the Acro- biguous instances of sculptural polychromy. polis; id. (1999) 110 on gendered skin tones on the Lefkadia Kentauromachy; id. 122 on racial 91 See Gordon, ‘The real and the imaginary’; skin tones on the ‘Alexander Sarcophagus’. Tanner, ‘Nature, culture and the body’, esp. 262–3. Cf. Vitruvius 4.5.1; 4.9 on cult statues 77 Walter-Karydi, ‘Prinzipien der archaischen gazing back at those who make vows and Farbgebung’, esp. 31, 37. Cf. Ridgway, Prayers in sacrifice; Pliny, Natural History 36.13 on the Stone, 125 on early Greek sculpture. statue of on Chios, which appeared to 78 Manzelli, La policromia, 33–90. visitors to change its expression; cf. Pausanias 79 Gordon, ‘The real and the imaginary’, esp. 9–10. 8.37.7 (with Elsner, Roman Eyes, 289) on mirrors 80 This idea of colour as ‘skin’ is explicitly outside temple doors creating ambiguous formulated, for example, at Aristotle, De Sensu reflections of cult images. 439a6–440b25 and in Lucretius’ Epicurean 92 On this image, see Rolley, La sculpture grecque, optics: De rerum natura esp. 4.74–97. The rami- 82. Cf. Mattusch, Classical Bronzes, 24 on an early fications this theory holds for broader issues fourth-century BCE vase fragment depicting a and cultural differences in colour perception life-like bronze cult-statue of Apollo inside a are explored in Bradley, Colour and Meaning, Doric temple, while the real Apollo sits outside. esp.c.2. On the representation of statues on vases, see 81 Finished statues and classical trompe-l’oeil are Monica De Cesare, Statue in immagine: studi sulle discussed by Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, raffigurazioni di statue nella pittura vascolare greca, 36–7 and 148–54. Roma, 1997. 82 On Roman statues in wall-paintings, see 93 See for example the gilded face of Mithras Reutersward,. Studien zur Polychromie, esp. 182, Tauroctonos (fig. 7). Further on the radiant 242; Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, 214–21. glow of cult images (alongside other visual, The most thorough and comprehensive study auditory and olfactory sensations), see Gordon, remains Eric Moormann, La pittura parietale ‘The real and the imaginary’, 13; Tanner, romana come fonte di conoscenza per la scultura ‘Nature, culture and the body’, 262. Tanner antica, Assen/Maastricht, 1988, which catalo- argues that the detached and unnaturalistic gued nearly 350 examples of representations of appearance of Archaic Athenian cult statuary sculpture in Roman wall-paintings. (e.g. Archaic korai) ‘served primarily the status 83 On colour, garden statues and trompe-l’oeil, see interests of an aristocratic e´lite’ and that this Reutersward,. Studien zur Polychromie, 207, 243. gave way to the naturalism of Classical statuary as an artistic expression of the openness, 84 Reviews of Moormann, La pittura parietale have interaction and accessibility that was conco- particularly focused on this difficult question. mitant with democratic culture; it would not 85 This image is discussed in detail by Stewart, be difficult to insert shifts in the naturalism of Statues in Roman Society, 38–40. sculptural polychromy into this argument . 86 Cf. Andreas Gruner, Venus ordinis. Der Wandel von (although Tanner does not attempt to do so). Malerei und Literatur im Zeitalter der ro¨mischen 94 So Elsner, ‘Cult and sculpture: sacrifice in the . Burgerkriege, Paderborn, 2004, 199, 203–4 on Ara Pacis Augustae’, Journal of Roman Studies,81, lifelike caryatids in Augustan paintings, 1991, 50–61., esp. 51 on the necessity for supporting a highly unrealistic entablature. ‘additional, creative and subversive interpreta- 87 Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, 40; cf. 221. tions which images evoke in different viewers 88 For example, Moormann, La pittura parietale, and at different times’. That meaning is always cat. 217/19 on white pigment used to identify a realized at the point of reception is also the silver statue of Aphrodite in the House of the line adopted by Marvin, The Language of the Vettii at Pompeii. Muses, esp. c. 9 ‘Roman ideal sculpture’. 89 That said, Vitruvius, De architectura 7.5.3 95 On Hephaestus, see Homer, Iliad 18.373–9, complains about the disintegration of ‘ratio 417–21. On Daedalus, Marion Muller-Dufeu, ed., ueritatis’ in contemporary painting. See also La sculpture grecque: sources litte´raires et´ epigra- Gruner,. Venus ordinis, 53. phiques, Paris, 2002, nos 80–150.

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96 This story is memorably described at Ovid, mentions colour only in passing; cf. Walter Metamorphoses 10.243–97, where the poet play- Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen fully toys with the materiality of the statue and Museum, Berlin, 1903, 19–20; Reutersward,. its strikingly lifelike appearance. Cf. Pliny, Studien zur Polychromie, 212–16, 244; Paolo Natural History 36.21 on Praxiteles’ cult statue Liverani, ‘L’Augusto di Prima Porta’, in Anna of Aphrodite of Knidos. Further on ‘agalmato- Gramiccia, ed., I colori del bianco, Rome, 2004, philia’, see Steiner, Images in Mind, 185–250; 235–42. Stewart, Statues in Roman Society, esp. 264–7. 105 See Brinkmann and Wunsche,. Bunte Go¨tter,24, 97 For the exhibition catalogue, see Panzanelli, fig. 22. Color of Life. 106 Unfortunately, its precise location within the 98 Jane Portal et al., eds, The First Emperor: China’s villa is not known. A base discovered near the Terracotta Army, London, 2007, esp. 172–4. atrium wall may have served as a suitable 99 See for example Om P. Agrawal, ‘A study of statue base: see Allan Klyne and Peter Liljen- Indian polychrome wooden sculpture’, Studies stolpe, ‘Where to put Augustus? A note on the in Conservation, 16, 1971, 56–68. The iconic bust placement of the Prima Porta statue’, American of Nefertiti now in the Egyptian Museum at Journal of Philology, 121, 2000, 121–8. Berlin is one striking example of artistic 107 Tanner’s argument (‘Nature, culture and the mimesis in Pharaonic sculpture. For general body’, 265) that detached sculptural form in discussion, see Donald Wilber, ‘The role of Archaic cult statuary alluded to a ‘commit- color in architecture’, The Journal of the American ment to an elite self-identity as theoeides, Society of Architectural Historians, 2, 1942, 17–22. godlike, while engendering a feeling of awe One might also compare ancient Mayan and deference towards the aristocratic e´lite on painted stucco sculptures and ceramics. the part of the demos’ might also be applied to 100 Donatello’s ‘St John the Baptist’ (1438) and the ‘super-human’ appearance of the Prima ‘Mary Magdalen’ (c. 1455), for example, both Porta Augustus (and similar Roman statuary), employ elaborate paint and gilding on a although the politics of viewing are likely to wooden base. Cf. also Claus Sluter’s ‘Well of have been very different. Moses’ (1396–1406) at Champmol, painted by 108 The pigments may originally have been Jean Malouel (court painter to the Burgundian subdued by other colours or finishes, but dukes) and gilded by Hermann of Cologne – see evidence has disappeared. It is possible that the S. Nash, ‘Claus Sluter’s ‘‘Well of Moses’’ for the red pigmentation may have been a base for Chartreuse de Champmol Reconsidered’ gilding, which was not uncommon on divine (published as three parts in The Burlington Magazine, 2005, 2006 and 2008); Gregor Erhart’s and heroic statuary. On the various possibi- ‘Vanitas’ group (c. 1500), painted by Hans lities of red imprints on marble surfaces, see Holbein the Elder. Further, see Ned Denny, ed., Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 107. Wonder: Painted Sculpture from Medieval England, 109 Suetonius, Augustus 79. On blond hair on Leeds, 2002. For an example of painted baroque Augustan heroes and divinities, see Ovid, sculpture, see El Greco (c. 1600) Epimetheus and Amores 1.15–35 (Apollo); Metamorphoses 6.118 Pandora, Museo Nacional del Prado, (E- (Minerva); Virgil, Aeneid 4.559 (Mercury). Cf. 483 and E-937). For a discussion of many of the Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 82 on representa- above pieces, see Panzanelli, Color of Life. tions of yellow-haired statues on vases. Some 101 Cf. also the Globe Theatre in London, which aspects of the importance of colour on sculp- was also elaborately painted in Shakespeare’s tural hair (esp. gilding) are discussed by Caro- day. line Vout, ‘What’s in a beard? Rethinking 102 Its marble-type, however, had confused Hadrian’s Hellenism’, in Simon Goldhill and archaeologists for centuries; see Pollini, ‘Parian Robin Osborne, eds, Rethinking Revolutions lychnites’. On the importance of Parian marble, through Ancient Greece, Cambridge, 2006, 96–123, see Bradley, ‘Colour and marble’, 10–11. esp. 115–17. 103 For a classic analysis of the Prima Porta, see 110 A literary analogue to the figural scene on the Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Prima Porta cuirass is Horace’s Carmen Saecu- Augustus, Ann Arbor, 1988, 188–92; cf. Kleiner, lare, which is particularly concerned with light Roman Sculpture, London, 1992, 61–9; Karl imagery (see Pollini et al., ‘Parian lychnites’, Galinsky, Augustan Culture, Princeton, 1996, esp. 283). 155–64. On the date, see Valentin Muller,. ‘The 111 A phosphoprotein treatment identified across date of the Augustus from Prima Porta’, Amer- the surface of the marble, as well as acting ican Journal of Philology, 62, 1941, 496–9. as a preservative, is likely to have softened 104 See Ulrico Ko¨hler, ‘Statua di Cesare Augusto’, unpainted parts of the statue. On candor as a Annali dell’Instituto, 35, 1863, 432–49, who rele- characteristic feature of the divine in Augustan gates discussion of colour traces to a footnote literature, see Virgil, Aeneid 8.608; [Tibullus] (p. 434 n. 1); cf. Guglielmo Henzen, ‘Scavi di 3.6.1; Ovid, Fasti 3.772. On the ‘divine Prima porta (2)’, Bulletino dell’Instituto di Corris- glow’ characteristic of classical cult imagery, pondenza di Archeologia, 4, 1863, 71–8, who see n. 94.

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112 On the distinctive colour of the paludamentum, which would have been particularly important dyed with cochineal (a scarlet pigment derived for binding the delicate blue pigment. This from crushed insects), see Pliny, Natural History binder is also likely to have had a significant 22.3; Silius Italicus 17.396. visual effect on the appearance of the colours 113 See esp. Meyer Reinhold, The History of Purple as (see p. 438). a Status Symbol in Antiquity, Brussels, 1976. Cf. 114 For details of the multiple pigment layers, see also Bradley, Colour and Meaning, c. 7. Tests in Liverani, ‘L’Augusto di Prima Porta’, 239, where the laboratories of the Vatican Museums from he suggests that the yellow pigment super- 1999 to 2002 detected evidence of a milk-based imposed on to the Egyptian blue of the tunic binder applied to the pigments of the statue, fringes is likely to be late-antique.

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