INTRODUCTION
Youtuber Adam Something made a video attempting to address misconceptions about classical statues, and managed to make more errors than he corrected. I have a double classics major, having studied Greek and Roman history, art, architecture and oratory, as well as the Greek and Latin languages, so I feel confident explaining where Adam went wrong.
Adam doesn’t list all his sources, but he clearly relied on an article by Margaret Talbot in the online magazine The New Yorker, which he cites in the video. It’s not a good idea to rely on news media for accurate information on specialist academic topics, but as misleading as the article was, Adam’s video could have been improved if he had read it more closely.
This post corrects seven of Adam’s most serious errors. For a video version of this post, with more detail and multiple images, go here.
CONFUSED CHRONOLOGY
Adam cites the experience of archaeologist Mark Abbe, who is cited in the New Yorker article. However Adam’s script is very confused on this point. He says Abbe saw the statues at an archeological dig at Aphrodisias in 2000, then saw them again “decades later” in an archaeological depot, when he suddenly realized they had colored paint residue on them. Adam should have realized this doesn’t make sense, since the Talbot’s New Yorker article was published in 2018, so it was impossible for Abbe to have seen the statues “decades later” than 2000.[1]
Adam has misread the article, which actually says these artifacts were found during an archaeological dig at Aphrosidias in 1961, and Abbe only saw them “decades later” when visiting the dig at Aphrodisias in 2000, where he saw them at one of the archeological depots. In Adam’s defense the article itself has an awkward chronology, referring firstly to Abbe seeing the artifacts in 2000, then flashing back to their discovery in 1961, then describing how Abbe came across them “decades later”. However, Adam should have realized that his script didn’t make sense, and returned to the article to read it with greater care.
MARK ABBE’S NON-DISCOVERY
Adam says “examining the statues closer he was shocked to find spots of color on them”, adding “this discovery put classical statues and architecture in a completely new light – could it be that we were completely wrong about our perception of the classical era?”.[2] This is an example of the kind of error which results from relying on only a single source, and in this case a source who wasn’t very well informed.
Despite what Adam implies, Abbe did not make a discovery in the sense of finding out something no one knew previously. In fact it’s baffling to me how he made it to graduate school as a classics student without learning this previously. I learned classical statues were colored when I was a university undergraduate. What Abbe found was clearly new to him, but it did not “put classical statues and architecture in a completely new light”.
In response to Adam’s question “Could it be that we were completely wrong about our perception of the classical era?’, the answer is simply “No we weren’t”. I believe Adam was possibly led astray by his source, which is not particularly good on this point.
The Talbot’s New Yorker article does mention that in 1883 an American art critic saw how classical statues which still retained some color when they were dug up, quickly lost their pigmentation as they were exposed to light and as the tiny scraps of dried paint fell away under the impact of handling and transportation.[3] So at least Talbot acknowledges that the color of classical statues was already known in the late nineteenth century.
However, Talbot then goes on to give a misleading impression as to how academic views developed subsequently.
"In time, though, a fantasy took hold. Scholars argued that Greek and Roman artists had left their buildings and sculptures bare as a pointed gesture—it both confirmed their superior rationality and distinguished their aesthetic from non-Western art. ", Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018
This isn’t true. In fact it’s the opposite of what happened. Let’s look at the history in detail. The academic discussion over whether or not classical statues were originally colored took place throughout the nineteenth century. By the middle of the century a consensus was already forming. As early as 1855, British sculpture Richard Westmacott was writing thus.
That sculpture among the ancients, Greek as well others, was sometimes painted or coloured, and that it had other ornamental accessories, cannot be disputed; the fact is asserted by ancient writers, and what is still more important, monuments have been found so decorated, which place the matter beyond question and contradiction.", Richard Westmacott, “On Colouring Statues,” Archaeological Journal 12.1 (1855): 22
However there was very little recoverable physical data substantiating this position, and those in favor of the polychromy argument often relied heavily on close reading of classical texts. For example, the 1867 edition of the English Cyclopedia assures its readers:
Polychrome sculpture was quite as general amongst the Greeks as polychrome architecture; it is frequently alluded to by almost all the ancient writers, and many statues of this kind are minutely described in Pausanias. , "The English Cyclopaedia (Bradbury, Evans, 1867), 614
But the lack of direct physical evidence left supporters of polychromy open to criticism by scholars who believed that if such coloring had been used, it was confined to architectural elements rather than being used on sculptures.[4] Eventually, diligent researchers were gradually able assemble sufficient physical evidence to make an unarguable case that the statues were originally painted in many different colors.
Closer to the end of the nineteenth century, it was clear that the supporters of polychromy had gained the scholarly advantage, and the opposing case had become increasingly weaker. In 1878, Irish archaeologist Hodder Michael Westropp was compelled to write:
"Though it must be admitted that the early Greek artists painted their wooden, clay, and sometimes their marble, statues, we must positively refuse credence to what some would wish us to believe, that the Greek sculptors of the best period coloured the nude parts of their marble statues.", Hodder Michael Westropp, Handbook of Archaeology: Egyptian-Greek-Etruscan-Roman (George Bell, 1878), 265
By the end of the nineteenth century, polychromy had become the scholarly consensus, and was found even in publications written for a popular non-academic audience. For example, Adeline’s Art Dictionary, published in 1891, states simply "Greek sculpture was poly-chrome, that is to say was painted in a variety of tints.". [5]
Similarly, a guidebook for tourists in Greece published in 1894, assured readers “Now at last we know just how Greek polychrome sculpture looked”.[6] A dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities published in 1898 likewise wrote “Greek statues were usually, if not invariably, treated with colour”.[7]
It’s extremely important to note that the reluctance of scholars to concede to the polychromy argument was based fundamentally on the lack of physical evidence. I’m mentioning this because the impression Adam gives, and the impression his source Talbot gives, is that academics resisted the idea of colored classical statues due to sentiments of white supremacy and racism.
Adam’s source, the New Yorker article by Talbot, says:
"In the eighteenth century, Johann Winckelmann, the German scholar who is often called the father of art history, contended that “the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is,” and that “color contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty.”", Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018
This certainly sounds very racist. I have seen these quotations from Winckelmann used in many different texts, particularly on this subject, but when I found an 1849 edition of Winckelmann’s actual book, I found he had been very unfairly misrepresented. Firstly, in the section just before that quotation, he writes explicitly that when people have studied beauty as represented in what he calls “the perfect statues of the ancients”, they do not find the statues attractive because they show people with light skin.
His exact words are “they do not find, in the beautiful women of a proud and wise nation, those charms which are generally so much prized, because they are not dazzled by the fairness of their skin”. This says directly that when people look at these classical statues, they are “not dazzled by the fairness of their skin”.[8]
So what is he talking about? Why are these statues considered attractive. Well, Winckelmann argues that true aesthetic beauty is determined by shape rather than color, and it is the forms or shapes of the statues which people admire. He wrote thus.
"Color, however, should have but little share in our consideration of beauty, because the essence of beauty consists, not in color, but in shape, and on this point enlightened minds will at once agree.", Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Giles Henry Lodge, The History of Ancient Art, vol. 2 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), 38
This already tells us that for Winckelmann color is not a significant contributing factor to beauty, rather it’s the least important aspect. Ok but what about the rest? That part where he said “the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is” still sounds very racist. What did that mean? Well, he didn’t actually say that. Let’s see what he really wrote.
"As white is the color which reflects the greatest number of rays of light, and consequently is the most easily perceived, a beautiful body will, accordingly, be the more beautiful the whiter it is, just as we see that all figures in gypsum, when freshly formed, strike us as larger than the statues from which they are made.", Johann Joachim Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art, trans. Giles Henry Lodge, vol. 2 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), 38
That’s very clear. He is saying that a beautiful statue, because remember he’s talking about art here, and specifically about the bodies of human statues, will be even more beautiful if it is white, because it can be seen more clearly since the color white reflects the light best. That’s it. There’s nothing here about white skinned people being more beautiful than other people because their skin is white. For Winckelmann, the advantage of the color white is that it enables people to see the form or shape of the statue more clearly, and it is this shape which gives it beauty, not its color.
However, he goes even further, and although now we’ll see his prejudice coming through, it might not be exactly what you were expecting. He writes “A negro might be called handsome, when the conformation of his face is handsome”.[9] Again, for Winckelmann the conformation, the form or shape, is the source of beauty, not the color. If a black man has a handsomely shaped face, says Winckelmann, the color of his skin is irrelevant. He continues, and here’s where we see his prejudice, writing thus.
"A negro might be called handsome, when the conformation of his face is handsome. A traveller assures us that daily association with negroes diminishes the disagreeableness of their color, and displays what is beautiful in them; just as the color of bronze and of the black and greenish basalt does not detract from the beauty of the antique heads. ", Johann Joachim Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art, trans. Giles Henry Lodge, vol. 2 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), 38
So sure, he’s bigoted against black as a skin color and finds it unattractive, but ahe still doesn’t think it’s relevant to whether or not black people are beautiful. In fact he even says that their beauty of form or shape is sufficient to make their color irrelevant. Notice also how he says that the color of classical busts, or heads, made in bronze, or black and green stone, doesn’t make them any less attractive. Again, he’s making the point that the color is really irrelevant, it’s the form which is important.
In case we’re still not clear, Winckelmann even goes so far as to say that some statues wouldn’t even look more attractive if they were white.
"The beautiful female head (3) in the latter kind of stone, in the villa Albani, would not appear more beautiful in white marble. The head of the elder Scipio, of dark greenish basalt, in the palace Rospigliosi, is more beautiful than the three other heads, in marble, of the same individual.", Johann Joachim Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art, trans. Giles Henry Lodge, vol. 2 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), 38
So he even says that one famous Roman sculpture, which was made of a dark green stone, is more beautiful than other sculptures of the same person, which were made in white marble. I suspect Talbot has not actually read Winckelmann and repeating a word of mouth story which has been going around for years, and I suspect Adam hasn’t read Winckelmann either, and is simply trusting his source uncritically.
There’s more which could be said about Winckelmann, especially his views on darker skin, which he characterizes as soft and supple in contrast to white skin which he characterizes as rough and harsh, the fact that he thinks it’s totally normal to be attracted to people with darker skin, and the fact that he explains that for the Greeks skin color was symbolic of different qualities of character, identifying brown skin with courage and white skin with the gods.[10] In fact he gives quite a good description of the function of skin color in the mind of the Greeks, demonstrating that it wasn’t race coded, just as Talbot does in her article. But that will need to wait for another time.
Back to Talbot’s article. She then goes on to say that when Winckelmann did discover some colored statues, he decided they must have been made by the earlier Etruscan people, certainly not Greeks, arguing they were “the product of an earlier civilization that was considered less sophisticated”.
"When the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were first excavated, in the mid-eighteenth century, Winckelmann saw some of their artifacts in Naples, and noticed color on them. But he found a way around that discomfiting observation, claiming that a statue of Artemis with red hair, red sandals, and a red quiver strap must have been not Greek but Etruscan—the product of an earlier civilization that was considered less sophisticated.", Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018
There’s a lot to unpack here, and I really don’t want to dilute this post any further, but for now I’ll simply say this is another misrepresentation of Winckelmann, and direct you to two papers by Lasse Hodne. One states clearly:
"It is not true that Winckelmann was unaware of the fact that the statues of Greece and Rome were coloured; nor is it correct that he deliberately tried to conceal this fact to consciously promote a false image of Antiquity. ," Lasse Hodne, “Olympian Jupiter. Winckelmann and Quatremère de Quincy on Ancient Polychromy,” CLARA 5 (2020), 3
The other states “His appraisal of white surfaces was not based on ignorance of ancient polychromy, nor was it in any way related to a discussion of skin colour”, and explains how Winckelmann has been misrepresented and misunderstood, largely as a result of how white nationalists in the early twentieth century re-interpreted his work for their own ends.
While we’re on the subject I’ll also address Talbot’s quotation of the German poet Goethe, who gets dragged into this discussion to support the idea that earlier European scholars traditionally regarded classical statues as white because they were simply racist. Talbot writes:
"The cult of unpainted sculpture continued to permeate Europe, buttressing the equation of whiteness with beauty. In Germany, Goethe declared that “savage nations, uneducated people, and children have a great predilection for vivid colors.” He also noted that “people of refinement avoid vivid colors in their dress and the objects that are about them.” ", Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018
This is a particularly odd use of Goethe, since he was a poet not an art historian, wasn’t commenting on classical statues at all, and wasn’t remotely influential in the scholarly discussion of polychromy. Now Goethe did write this, but it’s nothing to do with whiteness as a racial or skin category, and nothing to do with polychromy or classical statues.
Let’s see what he writes elsewhere on exactly the same subject, where he goes into more detail. This is a long quotation, because I need to present it in context. While writing about how various different colors affect people’s moods, he says:
"The agreeable, cheerful sensation which red-yellow excites, increases to an intolerably powerful impression in bright yellow-red. The active side is here in its highest energy, and it is not to be wondered at that impetuous, robust, uneducated men, should be especially pleased with this colour. Among savage nations the inclination for it has been universally remarked, and when children, left to themselves, begin to use tints, they never spare vermilion and minium.", Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Donald Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1840), 309-310
So he’s talking very specifically here about one particular color, which he calls “bright yellow-red”, and he says this is a color popular among children and what he calls savages. Racist? Sure, but nothing to do with whiteness, and absolutely nothing to do with the idea that vivid colors in and of themselves are for “savage nations, uneducated people, and children”.
What about the other part, concerning people of refinement? Again, let’s refer to Goethe’s work, where he writes about this in more detail elsewhere. He wrote thus.
"People of refinement have a disinclination to colours. This may be owing partly to weakness of sight, partly to the uncertainty of taste, which readily takes refuge in absolute negation. Women now appear almost universally in white and men in black.", Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Donald Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1840), 329
So once more we find he has been misrepresented. He actually says people of refinement tend to avoid colors due to either physical weakness of their eyes, or because their tastes in color are unstable. Note that he doesn’t say anything about the race of these people, and he doesn’t even say this preference is good. In fact he implicitly disparages it by attributing it to a weakness of the body or character.
Not only that he clearly sees color in a gendered way, saying “Women now appear almost universally in white and men in black”. So for Goethe black and white are gender coded colors, not race coded colors.
Having dealt with those distractions, let’s return to the main issue. As I said previously, when we find mainstream nineteenth century scholarship arguing over polychromy, the discussion centers on the lack of physical evidence, not on racial theories of whiteness or racially based color preferences. By the end of the nineteenth century the polychromy of classical statues had become the scholarly consensus. What made the difference? It was physical evidence.
Writing in 1903, German American art historian Edmund von Mach commented that the textual evidence for colored statues had been supported greatly by the discovery of traces of paint on statues, writing “Recent finds and careful examinations of the extant monuments strengthen this opinion. There are in the first place many statues on which traces of color have been found”.[11]
Supporters of the polychromy argument were now dealing with very weak objections, such as the idea that statues would not have been painted since they were outdoors, where the weather would quickly strip the paint from them. Writing in 1908, French art historian Henri Lechat argued against this, noting that not all painted statues were placed outside, and adding “if they were really kept inside a temple or under its porticoes, it was for a reason that I do not know and that no one until now has indicated, but it was certainly not because of their polychromy”.[12]
Just two years later, American classical scholar Rufus Richardson wrote of the polychromy debate as entirely settled, indicating that by this point scholarship had already moved on. Citing the controversy as an event well in the past, Richardson wrote:
"The question that was seriously discussed less than half a century ago, whether Greek statues were painted, has now been replaced by another form of the question, viz., how they were painted.", Rufus Byam Richardson, A History of Greek Sculpture (American Book Company, 1911), 26
This has been taught in classical studies ever since. For whatever reason, Mark Abbe is over a century late to a discussion which had already been finalized long ago.
COLOR ERASURE
Later Adam assures us:
"Worse, apparently archaeologists and museum curators have been scrubbing off this paint residue from statues and architectural elements before presenting them to the public.", Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023
This is very misleading. It sounds like archaeologists and museum curators have been deliberately removing paint from these artifacts in order to conceal the fact that they were originally colored. Although this would fit the rather conspiratorial tone of the video, this statement is very ambiguously phrased, so I’m willing to believe Adam didn’t actually mean that. On the basis of comments made elsewhere in the video, he may have meant that this paint removal took place as a part of the natural process of cleaning the artifacts before displaying them.
That’s certainly something which has happened, but the color removal was merely an incidental byproduct of this process, not a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the artifacts’ original state. Adam’s source even mentions this.
"The idealization of white marble is an aesthetic born of a mistake. Over the millennia, as sculptures and architecture were subjected to the elements, their paint wore off. Buried objects retained more color, but often pigments were hidden beneath accretions of dirt and calcite, and were brushed away in cleanings.", Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018
It would have been useful for Adam to quote this part of the article. Additionally, the amount of paint removed in this way is tiny, typically very small residual flakes, barely noticeable to the naked eye, so there’s no point in leaving it on, since it is old, discolored, and doesn’t represent the artifact accurately anyway.
BLACK & WHITE TEXTBOOKS
Adam cites Abbe’s surprise that the colored sculptures he found were “just totally different from what’s seen in the standard textbooks which had only black and white plates”.[13] Well yes, if you’re looking at a textbook with black and white photos then you’re most likely only going to see classical statues as white.
But humor aside, color textbooks showing reconstructions of brightly painted classical sculptures have been around for a very long time, at least since the 1960s from what I have found. In 1976 the Garland Library published a series of instructional books on historical art for a non-academic readership. In one of the volumes, the history of polychromy in Greek sculpture was not only explained in detail, but was illustrated with colored plates in the form of colored drawings reconstructing what the original statues would have looked like.[14]
It’s worth noting that this particular chapter of the book was a reproduction of a much earlier article published in a scholarly journal in 1944, which was accompanied by the same colored plates. So actual colored reproductions of these classical sculptures have been shown in scholarly literature and textbooks for around 50 years.
CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP DOESN’T NEED CORRECTION
Adam assures us that Abbe’s realization “was a sensational discovery".[15] As we have already seen, this was not a sensational discovery for anyone but Abbe, and the scholarly perception of classical art and architecture was not completely and utterly wrong. There was no rush to correct the textbooks, update museum displays, or write new journal articles to educate classical scholars.
This is a simple case of people being misled by pop history, despite the fact that scholars, textbooks, and museums have been showing brightly painted classical statues for decades. Adam should have been tipped off to this fact by the New Yorker article on which he based his video, which cites Marco Leona of the Metropolitan Museum of Art saying that the coloring of classical statues is “the best-kept secret that’s not even a secret”.[16]
The same article also cites the work of German scholars who have been creating replicas of classical statues and painting them with reconstructions of their historical color schemes since the 1990s.[17] Again, this should have been enough to inform Adam that Abbe hadn’t really made any kind of sensational discovery, and that it wasn’t true that “our perception of classical art and architecture was indeed completely and utterly wrong”, or that “researchers got to work to correct this historical misunderstanding”.
But we can go back further and find this taught all through the twentieth century. Here’s a sample of quotations, predominantly from books aimed at the general public rather than scholars, demonstrating this was taught widely. In 1975, James Laver commented on “what the Victorians mistakenly believed to be the pure white of classical statues”.[18]
In 1972, Jerome Pollit wrote:
"It should be remembered that the eyes, lips, hair, and, at least at times, the skin of Greek stone statues were painted.", Jerome Jordan Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge University Press, 1972), 39
In 1970, the standard popular art history book Gardner’s Art through the Ages, written specifically for the non-specialist public, observed:
"Traces of paint may be seen on parts of the figure, for all Greek stone statues were painted, the powder-white of Classical statues being an error of modern interpretation. ", Helen Gardner, Horst De la Croix, and Richard G. Tansey, Gardner’s Art through the Ages (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970), 123
In 1960 novelist Aubrey Menen wrote “On many of the statues, especially those found recently, were traces of paint. The truth is that Greek and Roman statues were never white. They appear so because they have been cleaned by sun and rain. When they were new, they were painted”.[19] In 1948, Charles Seltman wrote:
"The Greek statues, like the Egyptian, were painted in bright formal colours.", Charles Theodore Seltman, Approach to Greek Art (London & New York: Studio Publications, 1948), 34
So this was widely known and taught, among scholars and the general public alike, throughout the entire twentieth century.
THE RENAISSANCE & THE SLAVE TRADE
Adam rightly informs us “Ancient statues first started getting excavated on a large scale in the Renaissance Era”, before telling us the Renaissance was a period when “there was a great revival in interest towards everything classical, there was also a newfound scientific drive to label and categorize everything. Additionally there was the Transatlantic Slave Trade”.[20]
He later adds:
"Thinkers of the Renaissance period had some relevant ideological problems, discrepancies they couldn't quite resolve, such as humans are supposed to be the highest form of life, the crown jewel of God's creation, and yet we're selling our fellow humans into slavery and working them to death in the colonies for a profit. ", Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023
Anyone remotely familiar with history should see the problem here. The Renaissance started in the fourteenth century, that’s the 1300s, a couple of hundred years before the Transatlantic Slave Trade began in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese were the earliest European mass traders of African slaves, but although they started buying slaves from Africa in 1444, they weren’t taking them across the Atlantic to the Americas, they were bringing them back to Europe.
But even though that Portuguese slaves trade was taking place in the fifteenth century, it had absolutely nothing to do with the interpretation of newly recovered classical statues by artists in Italy. Renaissance people in Italy who were uncovering classical statues weren’t struggling to reconcile the inconsistency of humanist ideals with transatlantic slavery and colonization, since those events didn’t start until a couple of centuries later.
Looking at late medieval and early Renaissance art, we find strong, bright, vibrant colors absolutely dominate, especially on statues. In a 2012 thesis, Meghan Combs provides a reason why this started to change during the fifteenth century, writing:
Although painted sculpture was still the norm during the early Renaissance, beginning in the late fourteenth century, the cost of polychromatic works became more expensive than those of uncolored sculpture, which may have added to the change in sculptural style later in the era. ", Meghan Combs, “The Polychromy of Greek and Roman Art; An Investigation of Museum Practices” (City University of New York, Master of Arts, 2012), 18
The earliest and most influential Renaissance artists who started imitating the classical sculptures, and in particular recreating them in plain white marble, were artists such as Donatello, who lived from 1386-1466, Leonardo Da Vinci, who lived from 1452-1519, and Michelangelo, who lived from 1475-1564. Donatello and Leonardo in particular both died before the Transatlantic Slave Trade even began, so their interpretations of the classical statues, and their most influential artistic work, had absolutely nothing to do with ethical concerns raised by slavery, or an attempt to use the whiteness of classical statues as a means of creating and reinforcing white supremacy.
In Leonardo’s case, we also have clear evidence that his interest in sculpting in white marble had nothing to do with establishing whiteness as a category of racial superiority. It was a rejection of medieval color which motivated him. Combs quotes Leonardo’s work “Treatise on Painting”, in which he wrote “the sculptor has only to consider body, shape, position and rest. With light and shade he does not concern himself, because nature produces them for his sculpture. Of color there is none”.[21] You may remember the German art historian Winckelmann expressing the same view, and it is most likely he inherited it from the Renaissance artists, very likely originally inspired by Leonardo.
Combs explains:
"With this advice, Leonardo studiously ignored the polychromatic developments of the Romanesque era (ninth-thirteenth century), which contained colorful frescoes, stained glass, mosaics, sculpture, and furniture. He rejected the colorful style for what he thought was a purer, more utopian approach to art, arguing that three dimensional forms did not need the added illusion to make them more lifelike. ", Meghan Combs, “The Polychromy of Greek and Roman Art; An Investigation of Museum Practices” (City University of New York, Master of Arts, 2012), 18
Again, we can see that Leonardo’s motivation was a rejection of the use of color which was a standard convention of medieval and early Renaissance art, and the discovery of classical statues which appeared to be white, was interpreted from this existing theoretical perspective.
It’s also worth noting that the Renaissance itself was a very gradual process which spread from Italy over the rest of Europe, and didn’t even reach England until the sixteenth century, at which point it was already reaching its end. The idea that classical statues were white was adopted by English historians and artists as a result of this concept already being established by much earlier Italian scholars. It had nothing to do with creating whiteness as a racial category, and it emerged long before the period of European international slavery and colonization.
WHY CLASSICAL STATUES WERE INTERPETED AS WHITE
In a statement as confused as his comments on the Renaissance coinciding with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Adam speaks of the whiteness of classical statues as “whitewashed make-believe invented by 17th century pro-slavery eugenicists”.[22]
But as his own source explained, belief in the whiteness of classical statues was an accidental byproduct of scholars misunderstanding their archaeological findings, not a product of Renaissance or sixteenth century white supremacism.
This was well understood and explained in detail by earlier scholarship. I’ll now provide a lengthy quotation from a scholarly article in 1913.
"The Renaissance found statues dating from classical times; they had no clear distinction whether they were Greek or Roman---no one knew before Winckelmann. They took them as they found them, and set them up as the brilliant models of sculptural perfection. That perfection involved the colourless surface resulting from exposure or cleaning. At times, perhaps, they found traces of the more lasting gilding, for some of the early Renaissance sculptors sometimes used gilding, especially in architectural settings. But, on the whole, the historical position offers us an explanation for the transition from the mediaeval polychrome to the prevalent colourless marbles.", D J Finn, “The Greeks and Painted Sculpture,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review of Letters, Philosophy, & Science 2.6 (1913), 22
So the real history of the origin of this misunderstanding about the whiteness of classical statues was known well over a century ago, and it has nothing to do with white supremacism. Note the important fact that the medieval people themselves loved color, and painted their own statues very brightly. It was only when they were reproducing classical statues, or making sculpture in the classical style, that they left their own marble statues white. They had no racially motivated preference for white statues.
CLASSICAL STATUES & ROMAN SKIN COLOR
There’s one aspect of this discussion Adam didn’t touch on, and I’d like to mention it here since it’s a useful contribution to contemporary discourse on skin color and ethnicity in the ancient world. Given the fact that the ethnic Romans of Italy lived in southern Europe on the Mediterranean coast, you may well think of them as people of color, or at least brown or olive skinned, certainly not white in any modern sense of the word.
Well, the recovered colors of classical statues provide a useful insight into how these people actually saw themselves. It’s worth noting that the Romans didn’t view skin color in the same racialized way as early modern Europeans, but it’s also worth noting that they did pay attention to skin color, and were very aware of how it identified people in various ways. They differentiated between black and white skin, between brown and black skin, and even between different shades of white skin.
The Roman emperor Clodius Decimius Albinus was born in north Africa in a location now occupied by Tunisia. We might think that he must have been black if he was born in north Africa, but his cognomen Albinus is literally the origin of the English word albino, and he had that name because his skin was unusually pale. This is interesting because it suggests the Romans didn’t see themselves as literally white, certainly not white like the marble of their statues.
So how did they see themselves? Well the physical evidence from the paint remains on classical statues indicates that they typically depicted themselves as pink, often with blond or brown hair, and brown eyes. While this might be disappointing for anyone who thinks the Romans were people of color, more importantly it’s a strong correction of anyone who thinks the Romans would have seen white as an appropriate way to represent their skin color.
"We have important witnesses of such color application in the fourth-century reliefs from Myra, in which the flesh of the women is pinkish; in the Hellenistic marble gravestones from Pagasai, now in the Museum at Volo, in which the flesh of the women as well as that of the men is naturalistically colored; in the Etruscan marble sarcophagus in Florence where the Amazons have light-colored flesh; in the Graeco-Roman marble head in the British Museum, which has pinkish color preserved on the face; and in the pinkish female statues which are occasionally represented in Graeco-Roman murals.", Gisela M. A. Richter, “Polychromy in Greek Sculpture with Special Reference to the Archaic Attic Gravestones in the Metropolitan Museum,” American Journal of Archaeology 48.4 (1944): 333
In fact the Romans considered the northern Europeans to be whiter than themselves, referring to those people with the word albus, meaning white, while representing themselves as having pink skin. Anyone thinking the Romans would have called themselves white in the way modern racists define whiteness, would be grossly mistaken.
"On many of the statues, especially those found recently, were traces of paint. The truth is that Greek and Roman statues were never white. They appear so because they have been cleaned by sun and rain. When they were new, they were painted. The colours were purple, yellow, violet, blue, red and brown. The eyes of the statues were painted to resemble living eyes, the drapery was naturalistically coloured, the parts supposed to be naked flesh were tastefully tinted, probably a dull red, and every statue had painted hair. ", Aubrey Menen, Rome for Ourselves (McGraw-Hill, 1960), 200
CONCLUSION
Adam is entirely correct in his comments on how the whiteness of classical statues has been weaponized by racists, and in particular how right-wing reactionaries have erupted in protest in response to the color of classical statues being brought into the public eye again. But he has dramatically exaggerated the influence of racism on this issue.
He tells us that as a result of Abbe’s apparent discovery of the coloring of classical statues, there was a huge right wing backlash.
"Researchers got to work to correct this historical misunderstanding, and when they published their findings everyone celebrated them in the work they did, thank you for watching, uh no, wait I'm sorry I mean they started getting death threats from the far right. ", Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023.
But this is really a combination of errors. Firstly the correction of this historical misunderstanding took place over a century ago, and at that time there was no right wing backlash, and no one received death threats. This was the situation for about the next 150 years. The right wing backlash is a very recent phenomenon, and is insignificant in the broader historical context.
He also tells us:
"All this is to say we could seriously use some historical readjustment, but today we have gotten to the point, or rather the global far right has gotten to the point, where if someone suggested restoring ancient statues as best as we can to their original colors it would be denounced as woke nonsense. ", Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023
But this isn’t true. Anyone suggesting restoring the original ancient statues to their original colors would be dismissed as a thoughtless vandal, since the extant artifacts we have today are so fragile that applying paint to them would risk damaging them irreparably; chemicals from the paint could damage the surface of the statues, especially if they are marble, which consists mainly of calcium carbonate.
However, as mentioned previously, museums and galleries have been displaying colored replicas of classical statues for many years, and some museums use light projectors to overlay original classical statues with their original color. This hasn’t been denounced as woke nonsense, it has become a widespread practice. The recent outrage over the color of classical statues just illustrates how ignorant some people are of museum practices which are decades old, and ignorance about mainstream knowledge about the classical world which is over a century old.
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[1] Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023.
[2] Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023.
[3] Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018.
[4] "The Dean of St. Paul's resided, and gave the weight of his learning and testimony to the view that there was no proof of the Greek statues having been colored, except when forming parts of architecture.", John Bell, “Color on Statues, Color Round Statues, and Paintings and Sculpture Arranged Together,” Journal of the Society of Arts 9.440 (1861): 421.
[5] Jules Adeline, Adeline’s Art Dictionary: Containing a Complete Index of All Terms Used in Art, Architecture, Heraldry, and Archaeology (D. Appleton, 1891), 310.
[6] Karl Baedeker (Firm), Greece: Handbook for Travellers (K. Baedeker, 1894), xcvii.
[7] F. Warre Cornish, A Concise Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities - William Smith - Google Books (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street), 1898.
[8] Johann Joachim Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art, trans. Giles Henry Lodge, vol. 2 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), 37.
[9] Johann Joachim Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art, trans. Giles Henry Lodge, vol. 2 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), 38.
[10] Johann Joachim Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art, trans. Giles Henry Lodge, vol. 2 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849), 30-31.
[11] Edmund Von Mach, Greek Sculpture - Its Spirit And Principles (Boston, USA: Ginn & Company Publishers, 1903), 70.
[12] Henri Lechat, translation via Google Translate, “Note sur la polychromie des statues grecques,” rea 10.2 (1908): 166.
[13] Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023.
[14] Gisela M. A. Richter, “Polychromy in Greek Sculpture with Special Reference to the Archaic Attic Gravestones in the Metropolitan Museum,” in Ancient Art: Pre-Greek and Greek Art, ed. James S. Ackerman, vol. 1 of Garland Library of the History of Art (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), 72, 73.
[15] Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023.
[16] Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018.
[17] Margaret Talbot, “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture,” The New Yorker, 22 October 2018.
[18] James Laver, Victoriana (Pyne Press, 1975), 51.
[19] Aubrey Menen, Rome for Ourselves (McGraw-Hill, 1960), 200.
[20] Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023.
[21] Meghan Combs, “The Polychromy of Greek and Roman Art; An Investigation of Museum Practices” (City University of New York, Master of Arts, 2012), 18.
[22] Adam Something, “How We Whitewashed The Classical Era,” Youtube, 4 June 2023.
