I don't work on ancient sculptural #polychromy (or ancient art at all for that matter), so it's not surprising if I'm clueless on scholarly discussion of the problem @yora points out in this post: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@yora/114400410044185691
But maybe somebody in my network is?
To paraphrase Yora: given the coloristic(?) sophistication of e.g., surviving wall painting from Pompeii and Roman-era mummy portraits from Egypt and much else ancient art, aren't modern reconstructions of sculptural polychromy wildly simplistic and is that partly because we're only able to sample, when anything of the pigment remains at all, the initial undercoat?
Gamedev MastodonYora (@yora@mastodon.gamedev.place)Attached: 1 image
Attempts at replicating the paint jobs on ancient marble statues always looking pretty crap might be because the traces of pigments that can be recovered from the surface of authentic statues are only from the very first coat of paint.
Given that we have plenty of mosaics, and actual paintings on wood from Roman-period Egypt that have a lot of detail and shading, it seems almost certain that the final paint job on the statues would have been much more elaborate as well.
#archaeology #history
️ 
Titus chalcedony bust, Guy Ladrière collection. 
me
