Ancient polychromy

Doric architecture. Attempt at a reconstruction (1883).

The ancient polychromy (the original colors of monuments, but also of sculptures from classical Greek and Roman antiquity ) was known since the 18th century. In the 19th century, there was constant debate about the type and extent of the color versions, and experts continued to deal with this question later on. It was very reluctant to gain public awareness. Recent research is constantly expanding our knowledge in this area. The results are shown with a great response at special exhibitions.

Colored antiquity

Colored examples from Pompeii, Herculaneum and Rome (1883).

All ancient peoples designed their temples and palaces, their images of gods and men in color - Egyptians and Sumerians as well as Babylonians , Assyrians and Persians . In Greece there were temples with colored terracotta as early as the archaic period . Since the 6th century BC The capitals , entablature and gables of stone temples were painted in strong colors (yellow, blue, red). The monochrome gables of these buildings served as backgrounds for multi-colored groups of figures. An early example of this is the Aphaia temple on the island of Aegina , around 570 BC. Built in BC. Later, Roman art took on Greek models, but also had its own sources in the colored buildings and sculptures of Etruscan art. Extensive excavations, for example in Herculaneum and Pompeii , demonstrate the colourfulness of Roman buildings.

Ancient sculptures were painted with strong colors as well as the buildings of this era. In the Hellenistic period, pastel shades such as pink and light blue complemented the color palette. Shades of light and dark within a color underlined the shapes, for example when creating folds. Marble and bronze statues were often completely, or at least in parts, brightly painted. Tinted layers of wax were applied to make the areas of the skin appear alive. Semi-precious stones or enamel were sometimes used to give expression to the eyes . Gold was also a popular material. In the so-called chryselephantine technique, the face, hands and feet of the wooden or marble figures were covered with sheet gold and ivory. Examples of this technique are the statue of Zeus by the sculptor Phidias in Olympia and his Athene Parthenos , which is said to have been covered with removable gold plates with a total weight of around a ton.

The significance of color once had for ancient sculpture can be read from an anecdote passed down by Pliny the Elder . Then the excellent sculptor Praxiteles was asked which of his marble statues he liked best. "Those to whom Nikias (a famous painter at the time) laid hands," the master is said to have replied.

Colors and painting technique

An important historical source for the colors used in Greek and Roman antiquity is the natural history (Naturalis historia, 77 AD) of Pliny the Elder . Scientific sampling and its investigations go back about 200 years. At the beginning of the 19th century, the English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday examined paint residues on marble buildings in Athens. At the end of the 19th century, scientific research institutions were created for the work of the major European museums, for example a chemical research laboratory at the Royal Museums in Berlin in 1888. Today, non-contact and non-destructive methods in particular play a role.

The mineral cinnabar was particularly popular for red surfaces, but the less intense hematite was also common . Ocher, a mixture of brown iron stone with clay, quartz and lime produced yellowish and yellow-brown tones. Ultramarine , cobalt blue or turquoise can be extracted from the mineral azurite . For shades of green, there was malachite , a weathering product of azurite (therefore it cannot be ruled out today that green pigments were once blue). Strong yellow or orange came from highly toxic arsenic compounds from the mines of Anatolia . The soot from burned bone substances was used as black. Since the 5th century BC In addition, mixtures of white pigments with organic dyes were used. For example, the crimson cooked madder roots , lightened with white, resulted in very suitable skin tones.

The polychromy of ancient ceramics

The clay used to make pottery contained different metals, depending on its origin. The Attic clay used in antiquity, for example, has a high iron content, which turned red or black in a controlled manner during firing, through oxidation and reduction. With regard to ceramics, one speaks of polychromy when some of the painted vases were only painted after the firing process. The reason for this was, for example, the sensitivity of the paint to heat; beforehand, they were provided with a primer, such as the clay mineral kaolinite. Some colors have changed color due to their age or storage, are oxidized, and mineral colors dissolved more frequently than organic colors. Organic colors have been firmly attached to the respective substrate to this day.

- Use in Classical Antiquity: 800 BC BC - AD 600 in Roman and Greek rulers.

- Well-known representatives: The painter Nikias (anecdote by Pliny the Elder), Diosphus painter and others.

Rediscovery of antiquity

Color reconstruction on the scaffolding of the Concordia Temple in Agrigento

The classical traditions were almost completely lost in the "dark centuries" of the Middle Ages and in the early modern period . They were taken up again in the Renaissance (literally: rebirth ), first in 15th century Italy , when the attempt was made to renew culture from the spirit of antiquity. Builders and sculptors oriented themselves on what was still available in the art of classical antiquity. However, the builders of the time renounced the use of color, as did the great sculptors such as Donatello or Michelangelo . The surfaces of their sculptures retained the unchanged color tone of the material used - occasionally bronze, mostly marble.

Around three hundred years later, antiquity - and with it its interpretation in the Renaissance - was again the subject of intense scrutiny. The German archaeologist and art writer Johann Joachim Winckelmann idealized the Greek and Roman classics under the catchphrase “noble simplicity, quiet grandeur”, declared them the sole benchmark for artistic perfection and thus had a significant impact on German classicism . His work appeared when the Age of Enlightenment was at its height. Reason and simplicity should replace the dominant influence of religion and the wealth of forms of the feudal baroque . White was considered the aesthetic equivalent of these goals. In his main work, the “History of Ancient Art” from 1764, Winckelmann wrote: “Since the white color is the one which sends back the most rays of light, ... the whiter it is, the more beautiful a body will be.” Also Winckelmann apparently knew about the traces of paint on ancient works of art, but complained about "the barbaric custom of painting marble and stone" as a regrettable exception. His followers continued to take this position for a long time, either dismissing colored ancient sculptures as primitive early forms or ascribing them to the special case of Etruscan art.

Different views

Detail of the Parthenon in Athens. Reconstruction attempt by Gottfried Semper (1836)

Winckelmann's views influenced the view of antiquity for a long time, and according to some observers even to this day. But there was also opposition. In 1811 the gable figures of the Temple of Aphaia in Aigina were found, with significant remains of paint. In 1812 Johann Martin von Wagner , sculptor, painter and art agent for King Ludwig I of Bavaria , acquired the pieces for the royal collection in Munich. In a publication from 1817 he assessed the colourfulness of ancient works of art completely differently than Winckelmann and thus caused a sensation. His summary: “We are astonished at this apparently bizarre taste and judge it as a barbaric custom. ... If we had our eyes clear and free of prejudice for the time being, and at the same time the luck to see one of these Greek temples in its original perfection, I bet we would gladly withdraw our hasty judgment. "

“Polychromic study for the central building”, a classicist study by Ernst Ziller based on the model of Semper, probably for the Athens Academy

The time of intensive archaeological activities in the Mediterranean area began , and art scholars and architects repeatedly referred to the phenomenon of polychromy. In 1815 Quatremère de Quincy published his work on the Zeus statue at Olympia and named passages in ancient text on the colors of classical sculptures. Jakob Ignaz Hittorff , a French architect and archaeologist of German origin, published his work De l'architecture polychrome chez les grecs in 1830 . The Hamburg architect Gottfried Semper traveled to Italy and Greece between 1830 and 1833 to study the buildings of antiquity. In 1834 he published Preliminary Remarks on Painted Architecture and Sculpture among the Elderly and in 1836 the text The Application of Colors in Architecture and Sculpture - Doric- Greek Art , richly illustrated and partly hand-colored by the author. Adolf Furtwängler , archaeologist and director of the Munich Glyptothek , again examined the gable figures of the temple of Aphaia, which were kept in his house. He had a colored reconstruction of the west facade of the temple made on a reduced scale and wrote in a fundamental publication in 1906: “How infinitely important the color is on the ancient temple and its sculptural decoration, everyone will probably feel when they read the reconstructed colored picture returns to the colorless one. You have no idea of the shining, happy beauty of ancient Greek art if you don't know its color decoration. "

There could long have been no serious doubts about the colourfulness of ancient art, but about its concrete original appearance. Although the experts from Wagner to Furtwängler unanimously pointed out the importance of color for the art of antiquity, their conclusions did not agree in detail. More or less strong ties to Winckelmann's theses, mostly only fragmentary traces of color and unsuitable investigation methods left a lot of room for different interpretations. This is how the polychrome controversy developed , which continued throughout the 19th century. In addition to supporters of the extremes - “everything was white” or “everything was colorful” - there were others who took up middle positions. This was also possible because the colors used in ancient times had different durations. Ocher was lost relatively quickly, and mineral colors such as red and blue lasted for centuries. So as long as conclusive methods were not available, one could believe that the colors of antiquity were red and blue on white - because often only these colors could still be recognized.

One of the colored facade parts of the Reichsrat building in Vienna

Originally, the architect Theophil von Hansen wanted to design the Imperial Council building in Vienna in a polychrome exterior, based on the model of ancient Greek temples at the end of the 19th century during the historicist era . However, color was seen as an "indigenous", if not "barbaric" art form. This influenced the building committee, which rejected the architect's proposal for a multi-colored exterior design. The cost reasons made matters worse. Von Hansen was only allowed to make samples. These are located on the left corner of the facade of the parliament building and on the corner of Reichsratsstraße / Schmerlingplatz and still bear witness to Hansen's concept today.

Conflicts of this kind hardly reached the general public. In the 20th century, the interest of archaeologists and art historians in the question also decreased noticeably. As an explanation, in addition to the reference to the two world wars, the orientation towards the aesthetics of modernity is mentioned, the general departure from ornament and decor. This reluctance continued well into the second half of the century.

Recent research

Reconstruction of an armored torso of the Athens Acropolis. In a newer version gold was used instead of ocher.

Portrait bust of the Roman Emperor Caligula with remains of paint. Next to it is a plaster replica attempting to reconstruct the ancient polychromy. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek , Copenhagen

In the 1960s, the first promising attempts began in Munich to use ultraviolet (UV) light to make the traces of painting on some sculptures in the Glyptothek visible again. Since the 1980s, a working group led by the Bochum archaeologist Volkmar von Graeve has been researching the polychromy of antiquity using modern technical aids. One of the employees, Vinzenz Brinkmann , continued his research at the Munich Glyptothek. Alone or together with other scholars, he examined hundreds of Greek and Roman works of art, in his own house or in other museums around the world. Together with his wife, the archaeologist Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, he worked out a steadily growing number of reconstructions, colored representations on artificial marble or plaster casts . The experts are set limits that they can shift, but not remove. Even the latest methods provide at best more precise approximate values, but not versions that are unequivocally true to the original in every detail. In order to proceed methodically correct, several conceivable variants are therefore occasionally produced, unsecured parts are left out.

A fundamental technique for determining previous paint applications is based on so-called weathering reliefs . Poorly durable colors such as ocher soon left free areas that were exposed to the weather longer than others. Through long-term, comparative investigations, one can determine the earlier colors from the very flat reliefs created in this way. For this purpose, special grazing light is used, tightly bundled light that hits the surfaces at an angle and allows even the slightest unevenness to be clearly seen. Slightly recessed lines, with which ornaments were once drawn, become visible in this way. Wherever non-destructive testing is required, i.e. samples cannot be taken, reflection spectrophotometry is used, which is based on the light absorption of the color pigments. Other special techniques are reflected-light stereomicroscopy , X-ray diffractometry, infrared spectrography, UV fluorescence photography and UV reflection photography .

Knowledge of the polychromy of antiquity is becoming more and more common among archaeologists and is also increasingly reaching the interested public. The touring exhibition Bunte Götter , conceived by Brinkmann, is doing pioneering work here and has already been shown in several countries. Yet white marble statues are still considered ancient originals. Centuries-old viewing habits had firmly anchored this impression. Since 2004, a number of the new, scientifically proven reconstructions, together with the documentation of their creation, can be seen at highly regarded exhibitions in Munich, Copenhagen, Rome, Basel, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Athens, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Kassel and Berlin. It is not about replacing the classic museum pieces with colored replicas . In their artistic uniqueness, the originals are viewed by the restorers and curators as not interchangeable. But the color reconstructions could provide valuable additional information.

Older literature

Ludvig Peter Fenger: Doric polychromy: Investigations into the application of the color on the Doric temple . Berlin 1886, Heidelberg University Library .
Jacques Ignace Hittorff: Restitution du temple d'Empédocle à Sélinonte, ou l'architecture polychrôme chez les Grecs . Paris 1851, digitized version of Heidelberg University Library
Franz Kugler : About the polychromy of Greek architecture and sculpture and their limits . Berlin 1835, digitized on archive.org
Antoine Chrysostôme Quatremère de Quincy: Le Jupiter olympien or l'art de la sculpture antique . Paris 1815, digitized version of Heidelberg University Library
Gottfried Semper : Preliminary remarks on painted architecture and sculpture among the elderly , Altona 1834, doi : 10.3931 / e-rara-11926 , Google Books Search , digitized Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Johann Martin von Wagner: Report on the Aeginetic sculptures in the possession of SK Highness of the Crown Prince of Bavaria . Stuttgart / Tübingen 1817, digitized version of the Bavarian State Library

Recent research

Vinzenz Brinkmann , Raimund Wünsche (Ed.): Colorful gods - the colors of ancient sculpture . Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-933200-08-3 . [1. Exhibition catalog]
Vinzenz Brinkmann, Andreas Scholl (ed.): Colorful gods. The colors of ancient sculpture . Hirmer, Munich, 2010, ISBN 978-3-7774-2781-2 [3. Exhibition catalog]
Vinzenz Brinkmann, Oliver Primavesi and Max Hollein (eds.): Circumlitio. The Polychromy of Antique and Mediaeval Sculpture. Proceedings of the Johann David Passavant Colloquium, 10-12 December 2008 , Munich 2010.
Astrid Nunn , Heinrich Piening, Colored Statues in Mesopotamia - an ongoing project, in: Antike Welt 1/2016, 50–53.

Movie

Colorful gods. From the color frenzy of antiquity. Documentation, Germany, 2008, 26 min., Written and directed: Rudolf Schmitz, production: hr , arte , first broadcast: January 18, 2009