Classical statues were not painted horribly • Hacker News Board

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#41

Post by the_af » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

mopsi wrote: post #24

rwmj wrote: post #7

His final conclusion is terrible and spoils an otherwise excellent article. Unless he has really strong evidence of it, the specialists are very unlikely to be "trolling" the public. They are scientists and conservators doing their best, working away in museum backrooms.

> They are scientists and conservators doing their best Perhaps they're simply the wrong people for this problem? I'd very much prefer to see how artists would approach painting the figures, instead of scientists and conservators. Give them the tools that were available at the time and let them do their best. Even if tastes have indeed changed, something that matches our current taste will reproduce the impact of the…

> Give them the tools that were available at the time and let them do their best.

The end result would surely look better, but how would we be assured it resembled historical reality?

Do we know for a fact in these reconstructions there is no input whatsoever from artists? I know, for example, that paleo-artists are responsible for the reconstruction of what dinosaurs are currently thought to have looked like, and they are mostly artists that work in collaboration with scientists directing their work. Why do we think this is not the case for the reconstruction of colors of Roman statues?

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#42

Post by johndhi » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

Geonode wrote: post #28

I will die on this hill, because I'm right. Painters put on the first layer in saturated colors like this, then add detail, highlight and shadow. The base layer stuck to the statues, and the rest was washed away. This whole thing just won't go away because many people are operating outside their area of expertise on this subject. Painters layer paint, starting with a saturated base color. These archaeologists are sim…

Makes sense. This is basically how skilled painters of miniatures (Warhammer) do it.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#43

Post by empath75 » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

Geonode wrote: post #28

I will die on this hill, because I'm right. Painters put on the first layer in saturated colors like this, then add detail, highlight and shadow. The base layer stuck to the statues, and the rest was washed away. This whole thing just won't go away because many people are operating outside their area of expertise on this subject. Painters layer paint, starting with a saturated base color. These archaeologists are sim…

Even a middling warhammer miniatures painter would have done a better job of painting these statues than the reconstructions.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#44

Post by the_af » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #35

Geonode wrote: post #28

I will die on this hill, because I'm right. Painters put on the first layer in saturated colors like this, then add detail, highlight and shadow. The base layer stuck to the statues, and the rest was washed away. This whole thing just won't go away because many people are operating outside their area of expertise on this subject. Painters layer paint, starting with a saturated base color. These archaeologists are sim…

"many people are operating outside their area of expertise on this subject." Exactly. I takes years of really hard work to get good at this stuff. Decades. I do realize research budgets are not that awesome, but when claims are of aesthetic in nature (explicitly and implicitly) and deal with human craftmanship there should definetly be collaboration with also craftsmen subject experts. A good example where this was e…

> I do realize research budgets are not that awesome, but when claims are of aesthetic in nature (explicitly and implicitly) and deal with human craftmanship there should definetly be collaboration with also craftsmen subject experts.

Do we know for a fact this didn't happen in this case?

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#45

Post by johndhi » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

This is fun though I sort of wonder if it's attacking a straw man. Are there any reconstruction folks who defend these?

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#46

Post by the_af » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #18

dv_dt wrote: post #4

It seems a shame that there is a gap between the limits of what is possible to deduce from direct evidence, and what is likely possible given human ability. And further that the public viewing the reconstructions doesn't take away the subtleties of the difference. To me it's unlikely that some of these works weren't vastly better works of art created by what were likely master artists and craftsfolk of the day. One w…

If only there were some system that could start from some sparse and noisy observations and weave together a plausible completion...

> If only there were some system that could start from some sparse and noisy observations and weave together a plausible completion...

Humans?

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#47

Post by marginalia_nu » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

emursebrian wrote: post #39

buescher wrote: post #14

I think the best explanation is that classicists are not makeup artists. I am reminded of reading some classicists' attempt to create garum in the kitchen by making some unpleasant horror of mashed fish or something back in the eighties or nineties. No one ever mentioned in those kinds of write-ups back then that they still make fish sauce in Italy. (I looked for the source I'm thinking of and it's drowned out by mor…

Fish sauce is also really popular in southeast Asia and Worcestershire sauce is often made with fermented fish so can also be considered garum adjacent.

There's even a case that Ketchup is a distant relative, as it started out as South East Asian oyster sauce, was imported to Europe, turned into fermented mushroom sauce, was exported to the colonies, and finally turned into tomato sauce (though originally sometimes with fish in it).

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#48

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #19

One issue: the paints/pigments available in times past were not the full range we have today. Sometimes they had to make things somewhat ugly to both our and their taste because that is all they have available. They would still have done their best, but there are limits. We are hampered even more today because blues and greens tend to be sourced from organic materials that decay quick, while reds and browns are from…

[deleted]

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#49

Post by skybrian » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #7

His final conclusion is terrible and spoils an otherwise excellent article. Unless he has really strong evidence of it, the specialists are very unlikely to be "trolling" the public. They are scientists and conservators doing their best, working away in museum backrooms.

Yes, it’s speculating when it would have been better to do some journalism and ask some experts what they were doing.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#50

Post by empath75 » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #4

It seems a shame that there is a gap between the limits of what is possible to deduce from direct evidence, and what is likely possible given human ability. And further that the public viewing the reconstructions doesn't take away the subtleties of the difference. To me it's unlikely that some of these works weren't vastly better works of art created by what were likely master artists and craftsfolk of the day. One w…

It's the same problem with trying to reconstruct dinosaurs, with probably the same solution in terms of public communication -- producing a _range_ of possible reconstructions based on the available evidence.

That said -- I think we actually do have more indirect evidence than what the reconstructions used -- in fact 3 separate lines of evidence A) paintings of statues B) contemporary descriptions of statues and C) contemporary paintings in general. All of which suggest that the coloring would have been more subtle and realistic.

I think if we had contemporary paintings of dinosaurs with feathers and contemporary accounts in writing that dinosaurs had feathers, but no feathers in the fossil record, you would still be fairly justified in saying that dinosaurs probably had feathers.