The full colors of Greece and Rome

An exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York challenges our view of the Greco-Roman world

Archer, probably representing Paris of Troy, Chroma exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, photo by the Author.

Perception is both informed by reality and shapes our understanding of it. And sometimes our perception is so badly off that it leads us to formulate a highly misleading view of certain aspects of reality. One such case was clearly on exhibit at Chroma, a show running through March 26, 2023 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Chroma displays seventeen color reconstructions of Greco-Roman sculptures, scattered throughout the permanent Greco-Roman wing of the museum. These reconstructions show us what ancient art actually looked like, as opposed to the way we have come to think of it through the centuries.

Instead of stern black and white marbles we see a dazzling array of colors that—as a friend of mine put it—even seem a little too post-modern. But they aren’t. They are our best representation of what these art pieces truly looked like a couple of millennia ago.

The exhibit is the brainchild of a husband and wife pair of archeologists, Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, who have been working at this for over four decades. They used a number of cutting edge techniques, including multispectral photography and X-ray diffraction, to produce as historically and artistically accurate a rendition of the seventeen pieces as possible.

One of the most striking results is the reconstruction of two famous bronze statues found at Riace, near Reggio Calabria in southern Italy. They were likely originally displayed at the Parthenon in Athens, and represent a scene in the founding myth of the city: the Athenian king Erechtheus (foster son of the goddess Athena, protectress of the city) is about to fight to the death the Thracian king Eumolpos (son of Poseidon, the sea god). It is their mutual destruction that, somehow, will make it possible for Athens to survive.

One of Riace’s bronzes, reconstructed by the Brinkmanns, Chroma exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, photo by the Author.

I went to see the actual Riace bronzes in Rome, at a temporary exhibit shortly after they emerged from conservation back in 1981. They date from 460-450 BCE and were discovered at sea in 1972 near Riace. I was seventeen when I saw the two imposing sculptures, but I assumed, with everyone else, that what I was admiring looked about the same as what the ancient Athenians would have seen. Not even close. The Met reconstruction makes the scene so much more vivid and lifelike!

The interesting thing is that scholars have known about colorful Greco-Roman statuary (and temples!) for a long time. Edward Robinson, a Classical scholar and the third director of the Metropolitan Museum, wrote an influential article on the subject already in 1892. Curator Gisela M.A. Richter, also of the Metropolitan, wrote an article entitled “Polychromy in Greek Sculpture” back in 1944.

So why do most people keep picturing the Greco-Roman world in black and white? I mean, Americans built an entire city—Washington, DC—in what they call “Neoclassical” style, and didn’t think of painting its Capital or the Supreme Court building, or the Jefferson or Lincoln memorials in bright colors. Why on earth not?

Because it would look too “post-modern,” to quote my friend again. And therefore not serious enough, characterized by insufficient gravitas. And yet, the Greeks had been coloring things for a long, long time. One piece at the Chroma exhibit is of a Cycladic sculpture. You know, those figurines that so influenced modern artists like Picasso and Brancusi.

captionColored Cycladic sculpture, Chroma exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, photo by the Author.

A study conducted at the Met in the 1990’s showed that almost every single Cycladic sculpture in the museum’s collection has traces of pigment! The ancient artists used a variety of materials, including azurite for blue, cinnabar for red, and malachite for green. They painted jewelry, facial features, hair, and eyes. As the Chroma guide puts it:

“The emphasis on the eyes, often portrayed as open and sometimes located in unusual places, activates the figures and suggests that they had a significance and ritual use beyond their burial in tombs.”

Polychromy—from the Greek for “many colors” was used for many centuries, beginning at least with the Cycladic sculptures and continuing through the Classical and Hellenistic periods in Greece, and then moving to Republican and Imperial Rome.

One of the most stunning examples from the Archaic Period (800-480 BCE) is a sphinx on top of the grave marker for a young Athenian. It truly is hard to believe that this is what it looked like:

Archaic sphinx, Chroma exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, photo by the Author.

Now just let all of the above sink in for a minute. You will never again be able to go to Rome or Athens, look at the Colosseum or the Parthenon, and not picture them in bright colors. Exhibits like Chroma, which have been hosted by more than twenty museums since 2003, contribute to dramatically reshape a misconception about our own past that has endured for centuries. These works also remind us that sometimes what we take for granted is, in fact, a highly distorted view of reality, a view that takes a lot of mindful effort and education to correct.