Everything you heard in the Duveen galleries, of course, is true. I just posted a drawing (in COTD) of the young athlete adjusting
his victory crown (evidenced by the point of attachment on the 'copies' and the position of the raised
arm and by earlier reliefs showing young athletes adjusting their crowns): these crowns were made of bronze (for durability, I think) covered with gold leaf. Made separately, even for the original bronze statue.
As for those
Smithsonian colors and those on the Kassel replicas and on sundry casts in
cast museums. They usually are based on spectra of traces or sometimes on literary evidence--more or less. They are gross. Not too bright, not too dark or light, but ignorant.
The only ancient paint that would adhere to marble was encaustic; arguably, whether in
Egypt or in
Greece, encaustic (which contained not only pigment and beeswax but animal glue--like, from hooves) was invented for coloring architectural details. Shortly, it also was used for coloring on marble statuary. Yes, the Acropolis archaic
statues were painted. Yes, certainly, the
Aegina pedimental figures were painted. No, the colors didn't look like that! No, they didn't look like the plaster casts tinted with water soluble colors. Even the (these are a
bit different) ancient
Egyptian statues, fully colored, carved from limestone or
wood, then coated with gesso, then painted, of which we have, for example the Scribe, Kay, Dyn. 5, in the Louvre. Not poster-paint colors on Kay!
First, to eliminate the most egregious outrage: both
Greeks and Etruscans adopted the
Egyptian color code: red-brown for males, white or cream or pinkish cream for females. Mediterraneans typically who spend time outdoors get very tan; pale, especially
pink, was code for feminine. A
pink archer is appalling. In Greek terms (I don't like it either, but that doesn't matter).
Second, these yucky reconstructions don't show what colors look like in Mediterranean sunlight. Saturated colors, necessarily mineral colors (vegetable colors fade),
applied carefully, probably coated with beeswax, too--on three-dimensional, solid forms, modeled by full sunlight, later in the day by warm afternoon light.
Smithsonian's evenly graduated (abuse of Photoshop) cyan sky, the like of which I never saw in
Athens, clearly betrays their taste.
Pat L.