The multicolored beauty of classical sculpture revealed
Antiquity in Colour — Gallo-Roman Museum, Tongeren (B)
The exhibition Antiquity in Color, in the Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren, brings the public closer to what the sculptures of classical antiquity really looked like. The process of painting marble is explained in a very didactic way, both for adults and children.
The classical world was a multicoloured world. Everyone knows statues such as Augustus Prima Porta, which represents the first Roman emperor Octavian Augustus. If time travel were an option, it would confirm that these statues did not look as we recognise them today, with that bright white, but were painted in a wide palette of colours.
In this exhibition you can travel back in time to see the reconstruction of the original sculpture of the emperor and many other examples of polychromy in Roman and Greek times. Antiquity in Colour is the result of almost 40 years of research by the German archaeologist Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Brinkmann and his wife Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann. Over time, the marble lost its layers of paint. But these researchers were interested in recovering each of its colours, starting by analysing the remains with the naked eye.
All the reconstructions in the exhibition, of which there are more than 30, have been made by them. In addition, they used the techniques of those times so that the colour was as similar as possible to the reality of the period. They themselves explain this in a video shown in the museum.
First of all, phrases related to the art of sculpture written down by authors, politicians and other illustrious figures of the time crown the beginning of each room of the exhibition in Tongeren. Furthermore, the explanations are in two versions: one for children and one for adults. There are even 3D recreations.
Those who need an overview of the historical context or an introduction to archaeology, don’t have to worry. Everything is written in a clear and simple way. The aim is to spread knowledge about the colours of antiquity among the population.
The exhibition is not just a gallery of sculptures, but also shows authentic tools used in the cutting and painting process. There is a section dedicated to the pigments used by the artists. On display are both the materials from which the pigments were obtained and the pigments themselves. Most of these were obtained by grinding minerals into a fine powder, such as yellow and red ochre.
But who painted the sculptures? So far only three representations of ancient painters are known, and in the Museum of Tongeren you can see one of them.
The colourful statues of emperors, gods, and mythological figures make us reflect about what was and was not considered art, since from the Renaissance onwards the great artists mostly worked with white Carrara marble.
However, in this exhibition we can see a very different reality to the one that dominates the collective imagination. Painting is not the only element that breaks this belief. There is also bronze. Two famous bronze sculptures have been reconstructed, being one of the treasures of the exhibition. In addition to the bronze ones, there is also the sculpture of the Trojan Archer, which amazes for its striking original colours.
The statue painters of the classical world have been discovered late. But one can still appreciate their great work as did Praxiteles (a famous sculptor of ancient Greece), who, when asked which of his marble works he liked best, replied: “Those painted by Nicias”. So thank you to all the Nicias.
For those who want to visit the exhibition, the Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren opens from Tuesday to Friday (09.00h-17.00h) and on the weekends (10.00h-18.00h).
