Th Myth of White - Rome in Colour
‘The Myth of White’ - Rome in Colour
During my lecture today we looked at the fact that the Prima Porta statue was originally highly coloured and having just written a blog post on the Prima Porta and not mentioned this fact I felt compelled to fix this oversight. However, after starting to research about colour in antiquity I became fascinated by why we picture Greek and Roman sculpture in this perfect white marble.
My Photos from the Vatican Museum (2017)
You can see how all the statues are clean white marble,
this type of portrayal is what perpetuates the myth of white
So, why do we have this ‘myth of white’. A lot of this has to do with the fashions of the 17th and 18th centuries in the wake of the Renaissance. Influential scholars such as Johann Winckelmann (who is often called the father of art history) says that “white was the epitome of beauty and colour inits self wasn’t beautiful,” (Winckelmann, J. Irwin, D. 1972:101-118.) This sentiment very much reflects the time it was written in and the Eurocentric beliefs held by Winckelmann. Dr Sarah Bond in her article Whitewashing Ancient Statues: Whiteness, Racism And Colour In The Ancient World (April 2017) says that Winckelmann like others of this time believed that “colour in art was linked to barbarianism and therefore it just wasn’t possible for the enlightened Ancient Greeks and Romans to colour their art.” Bond has come under a lot of criticism for this article and was even the victim of online abuse and harassment including antisemitism (she has jewish heritage)1. Donna Zuckerberg in her book Not All Dead White Men (2018) also tackles this issue of ‘whitewashing art’ focusing on white supremacy and its appropriation of classics. Zuckerberg discusses the fact that ‘white’ statues are used to give legitimacy and a sense of superiority to the views of the Red pill community, she says “ancient texts are being distorted and stripped of context in order to lend gravitas to campaigns of misogyny and white supremacy,” (Zuckerberg,D. 2018) Zuckerberg has also been the subject of online abuse and harassment she discusses the impact of these threats in her blog post “who do we think we are”. This perversion of the classical world by groups like the Red Pill Community is both worrying and dangerous but with a little public education and classical awareness this type of misappropriation of classical culture could be stopped, this is however perhaps a topic of discussion for a future post, or maybe even my dissertation.
1 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/19/classicist-finds-herself-target-online- threats-after-article-ancient-statues
I think a large part for this mistaken belief of white is the presentation of statues, art and architecture in museums. For example if you go and visit the Vatican museum in Rome all of the Greek and Roman antiquities are displayed as pure white marble. This display helps perpetuate this myth of white as there is often no indication in the description of the artefact that they were ever anything else.
A reconstruction of the Parthenon Frieze showing it in its original colours
Photo credit: Unknown
However, this is slowly beginning to change the British Museum in London now recognises the colourful nature of Greek art in its Parthenon gallery. The Parthenon frieze like the Prima Porta Statue was also originally highly coloured and thanks to the use of modern scientific analysis we can see traces of this colour still on the stone. Back when the marbles were first brought to the British Museum in 1811 they underwent an extensive cleaning process with the marbles being regularly cleaned up until 1936, in some case they were even cleaned with acid. This created the nice white stone that people expected to see. Unfortunately, it also damaged the surface of the stone, damage which is still evident today. Thankfully the British museum has actually acknowledged this mistake and even has a post on its website about the cleaning of the Parthenon marbles. Nowadays the British Museum is taking steps to show how the frieze would have looked back when it was first built, not this whitewashed stereotype that it helped create. One of the ways it is doing this is by having a replica section of the frieze displayed in all its technicolour glory.
The study of colour in antiquity has really taken off in the last few years. Currently the tracking colour project run out of Denmark is looking at Greek and Roman statues for evidence of polychromy. The huge international and multidisciplinary team are working together to gain a deeper understanding of visual culture.
Why colour? So, we know that statues were likely coloured but what purpose did the colour serve?
Focusing back on The Prima Porta statue a coloured version was created after analysing the Vatican sculpture, which showed extensive traced of blue and red pigment from head to toe. (Bradley, M 2006:29) This may look garish and just plain wrong to us now but it is probably closer to how it would have looked compared to the ghost white version we are used to. Mark Bradly says in his article The colour of Marble in Early Imperial Rome (2006:29), “that the colour in places like his face was likely quite subtle in order to use the natural colours of the marble and the paint only ‘finished’ the sculpture.” He says that the “paint was likely used to enrich, rather than replace the underlying marble surface.”(2006:34) Bond also reiterates this fact saying that to a roman the statue would be incomplete without its painted surface, (Bond,S. June 2017)
Polychrome reconstruction of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus
Photo credit: Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford
Dr Mark Bradly is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and has written several papers and books on colour in the ancient world he is one of the leading authorities on the subject. In his article The Importance of Colour in Early Imperial Rome he states 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”
(2006:447).
This is an interesting point as as I mentioned previously Augustus’ statues were an extension of himself, they acted as his proxy. Therefore by making the statue as life like as possible could only have helped this purpose. As for making it more legible the statue was a propaganda piece for his Parthian ‘victory’ and the establishment of his legitimacy as princeps. By making the breastplate figures standout this message is clearer to the viewer and therefore is more likely to be remembered.
Mark Bradley also makes a very interesting point that as this marble copy was likely to have been made after his death (see previous blog post) that the colour used helped bring the “deceased emperor back into the world of the living” he says that “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.” (2009:450) This colourful version of the statue helps create the myth of Augustus it immortalises him as this idealised, triumphant and heroic general who is able to transcend time and live forever.
When you see the Prima Porta stood in the Vatican Museum it is impressive and as I’ve said previously you do get a sense of him being there somehow looking down on you. However, after seeing the colour version I would amend my original thoughts and say that looking at this version it is everything you expect when looking at a Roman statue, it fulfils all of our preconceived criteria. However, knowing now that Rome wasn’t this gleaming white marble metropolis and this statue would look so out place in ancient Rome creates a detachment from its subjects and its purpose, it now looks cold and takes away this feeling of life. I can’t help wonder what an ancient would think if they saw it now, would they even recognise it?
The colour is so important and ignoring it presence is wrong, many of the articles I read for the previous blog never even mentioned that the statue would have been painted. The colour on the Prima Porta adds life not just to Augustus but of what he represents and how he goes about representing it. The colour brings the mythology to the forefront, the intricate ‘curiass’ is now front and centre, the figures no longer difficult to read or slightly hidden in the background. The colour allows the meaning of the mythology to be transmitted in a clear and obvious way something the white version can not do.
I personally will never be able to look at another Greek or Roman statue the same way again, I will always be adding the colour in my mind in order to bring them back to life.
Bibliography
BRADLEY, M. (2006). COLOUR AND MARBLE IN EARLY IMPERIAL ROME. The Cambridge Classical Journal, 52, 1-22.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/statements/ parthenon_sculptures/ 1930s_cleaning/cleaning_the_sculptures.aspx (11/10/19)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/04/27/whitewashing-ancient-statues- whiteness- racism-and-color-in-the-ancient-world/ (11/10/19)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical- sculpture (11/10/19)
http://www.trackingcolour.com (11/10/19)
Bradley, M. (2006) ‘Colour and marble in early imperial Rome’,Cambridge Classical Journal 52 1-22.
Bradley, M. (2009) ’The importance of colour on ancient marble sculpture’, Art History 32, 427-57
Bradly, M. (2009 ‘Colour and meaning in Ancient Rome’ Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Squire, M. (2013) ‘Embodied Ambiguities on the Prima Porta Augustus’ Art History 36.2, 242-79
Winckelmann, J. Irwin,D. (eds.) (1972) Winckelmann Writings on Art History, New York. Phaidon Publishers Inc.
The polychromy of Greek and Roman sculpture and architecture by Cecilie Brøns.- https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaHJONR4QR4 (11/10/19)
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/19/classicist-finds-herself-target- online-threats-after-article-ancient-statues (18/10/19)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/red-pill-mens-rights-anti-feminist-group- who-know-what-women-want/ (18/10/19)
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2019/2019-05-20.html (18/10/19)
https://wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2018/05/14/who-do-we-think-we-are/ (21/10/19)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/humanities/departments/classics-and-archaeology/people/mark.bradley (21/10/19)
‘The Myth of White’ - Rome in Colour
During my lecture today we looked at the fact that the Prima Porta statue was originally highly coloured and having just written a blog post on the Prima Porta and not mentioned this fact I felt compelled to fix this oversight. However, after starting to research about colour in antiquity I became fascinated by why we picture Greek and Roman sculpture in this perfect white marble.
 |
My Photos from the Vatican Museum (2017)
You can see how all the statues are clean white marble,
this type of portrayal is what perpetuates the myth of white
|
So, why do we have this ‘myth of white’. A lot of this has to do with the fashions of the 17th and 18th centuries in the wake of the Renaissance. Influential scholars such as Johann Winckelmann (who is often called the father of art history) says that “white was the epitome of beauty and colour inits self wasn’t beautiful,” (Winckelmann, J. Irwin, D. 1972:101-118.) This sentiment very much reflects the time it was written in and the Eurocentric beliefs held by Winckelmann. Dr Sarah Bond in her article Whitewashing Ancient Statues: Whiteness, Racism And Colour In The Ancient World (April 2017) says that Winckelmann like others of this time believed that “colour in art was linked to barbarianism and therefore it just wasn’t possible for the enlightened Ancient Greeks and Romans to colour their art.” Bond has come under a lot of criticism for this article and was even the victim of online abuse and harassment including antisemitism (she has jewish heritage)1. Donna Zuckerberg in her book Not All Dead White Men (2018) also tackles this issue of ‘whitewashing art’ focusing on white supremacy and its appropriation of classics. Zuckerberg discusses the fact that ‘white’ statues are used to give legitimacy and a sense of superiority to the views of the Red pill community, she says “ancient texts are being distorted and stripped of context in order to lend gravitas to campaigns of misogyny and white supremacy,” (Zuckerberg,D. 2018) Zuckerberg has also been the subject of online abuse and harassment she discusses the impact of these threats in her blog post “who do we think we are”. This perversion of the classical world by groups like the Red Pill Community is both worrying and dangerous but with a little public education and classical awareness this type of misappropriation of classical culture could be stopped, this is however perhaps a topic of discussion for a future post, or maybe even my dissertation.
1 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/19/classicist-finds-herself-target-online- threats-after-article-ancient-statues
I think a large part for this mistaken belief of white is the presentation of statues, art and architecture in museums. For example if you go and visit the Vatican museum in Rome all of the Greek and Roman antiquities are displayed as pure white marble. This display helps perpetuate this myth of white as there is often no indication in the description of the artefact that they were ever anything else.
 |
A reconstruction of the Parthenon Frieze showing it in its original colours
Photo credit: Unknown
|
However, this is slowly beginning to change the British Museum in London now recognises the colourful nature of Greek art in its Parthenon gallery. The Parthenon frieze like the Prima Porta Statue was also originally highly coloured and thanks to the use of modern scientific analysis we can see traces of this colour still on the stone. Back when the marbles were first brought to the British Museum in 1811 they underwent an extensive cleaning process with the marbles being regularly cleaned up until 1936, in some case they were even cleaned with acid. This created the nice white stone that people expected to see. Unfortunately, it also damaged the surface of the stone, damage which is still evident today. Thankfully the British museum has actually acknowledged this mistake and even has a post on its website about the cleaning of the Parthenon marbles. Nowadays the British Museum is taking steps to show how the frieze would have looked back when it was first built, not this whitewashed stereotype that it helped create. One of the ways it is doing this is by having a replica section of the frieze displayed in all its technicolour glory.
The study of colour in antiquity has really taken off in the last few years. Currently the tracking colour project run out of Denmark is looking at Greek and Roman statues for evidence of polychromy. The huge international and multidisciplinary team are working together to gain a deeper understanding of visual culture.
Why colour? So, we know that statues were likely coloured but what purpose did the colour serve?
Focusing back on The Prima Porta statue a coloured version was created after analysing the Vatican sculpture, which showed extensive traced of blue and red pigment from head to toe. (Bradley, M 2006:29) This may look garish and just plain wrong to us now but it is probably closer to how it would have looked compared to the ghost white version we are used to. Mark Bradly says in his article The colour of Marble in Early Imperial Rome (2006:29), “that the colour in places like his face was likely quite subtle in order to use the natural colours of the marble and the paint only ‘finished’ the sculpture.” He says that the “paint was likely used to enrich, rather than replace the underlying marble surface.”(2006:34) Bond also reiterates this fact saying that to a roman the statue would be incomplete without its painted surface, (Bond,S. June 2017)
Focusing back on The Prima Porta statue a coloured version was created after analysing the Vatican sculpture, which showed extensive traced of blue and red pigment from head to toe. (Bradley, M 2006:29) This may look garish and just plain wrong to us now but it is probably closer to how it would have looked compared to the ghost white version we are used to. Mark Bradly says in his article The colour of Marble in Early Imperial Rome (2006:29), “that the colour in places like his face was likely quite subtle in order to use the natural colours of the marble and the paint only ‘finished’ the sculpture.” He says that the “paint was likely used to enrich, rather than replace the underlying marble surface.”(2006:34) Bond also reiterates this fact saying that to a roman the statue would be incomplete without its painted surface, (Bond,S. June 2017)
 |
| Polychrome reconstruction of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus Photo credit: Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford |
Dr Mark Bradly is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and has written several papers and books on colour in the ancient world he is one of the leading authorities on the subject. In his article The Importance of Colour in Early Imperial Rome he states 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”
(2006:447).
This is an interesting point as as I mentioned previously Augustus’ statues were an extension of himself, they acted as his proxy. Therefore by making the statue as life like as possible could only have helped this purpose. As for making it more legible the statue was a propaganda piece for his Parthian ‘victory’ and the establishment of his legitimacy as princeps. By making the breastplate figures standout this message is clearer to the viewer and therefore is more likely to be remembered.
Mark Bradley also makes a very interesting point that as this marble copy was likely to have been made after his death (see previous blog post) that the colour used helped bring the “deceased emperor back into the world of the living” he says that “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.” (2009:450) This colourful version of the statue helps create the myth of Augustus it immortalises him as this idealised, triumphant and heroic general who is able to transcend time and live forever.
When you see the Prima Porta stood in the Vatican Museum it is impressive and as I’ve said previously you do get a sense of him being there somehow looking down on you. However, after seeing the colour version I would amend my original thoughts and say that looking at this version it is everything you expect when looking at a Roman statue, it fulfils all of our preconceived criteria. However, knowing now that Rome wasn’t this gleaming white marble metropolis and this statue would look so out place in ancient Rome creates a detachment from its subjects and its purpose, it now looks cold and takes away this feeling of life. I can’t help wonder what an ancient would think if they saw it now, would they even recognise it?
The colour is so important and ignoring it presence is wrong, many of the articles I read for the previous blog never even mentioned that the statue would have been painted. The colour on the Prima Porta adds life not just to Augustus but of what he represents and how he goes about representing it. The colour brings the mythology to the forefront, the intricate ‘curiass’ is now front and centre, the figures no longer difficult to read or slightly hidden in the background. The colour allows the meaning of the mythology to be transmitted in a clear and obvious way something the white version can not do.
I personally will never be able to look at another Greek or Roman statue the same way again, I will always be adding the colour in my mind in order to bring them back to life.
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2019/2019-05-20.html (18/10/19)
https://wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2018/05/14/who-do-we-think-we-are/ (21/10/19)https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/humanities/departments/classics-and-archaeology/people/mark.bradley (21/10/19)
