Many Ancient Marble Statues Were Painted

Archer from Temple of Athena with painted surface.

Research at Stanford University is revealing that many ancient Greco-Roman sculptures were not displayed in their marble whiteness, but instead were brightly painted.

According to Past Horizons in interviewing the university’s Ivy Nguyen:

Though we still think of ancient Greece and Rome in terms of white marble sparkling under a hot Mediterranean sun, a new exhibition shows a Greco-Roman lady as she was meant to be seen – in technicolor. Not everyone may take to Stanford’s painted lady, but first impressions can change. “It’s very different – some have called it kind of garish,” admitted Nguyen, but she confesses that she’s gotten used to it. 

We’ve always known that ancient statues were painted: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a vase, circa 360-350 B.C., depicting a man painting a statue of Herakles. The most important evidence is on the statues themselves – traces of paint that time did not wash from the creases and crevices in porous marble.

Nguyen’s research indicates the marble surfaces were painted, but cannot detect how many coats of paint the ancients may have applied to the sculptures.

Click here for the article and a video.

Thousands of Cave Paintings Found in Jungle

A painting from Peru’s Toquepala caves, similar in style and content to the newly discovered paintings near the Tambolic caves.


In the past two years, a Peruvian archaeologist has discovered more than 10,000 cave paintings ~ dating back more than 6,000 years ~ in the Peruvian section of the Amazonian jungle. The paintings have been hidden by lush vegetation for centuries, in caves near the village of Tambolic.

“Over the past two years,” says archaeologist Quirino Olivera, “we have found 6,000-year-old cave paintings, especially in the Cuaco and Yamón mountains, located in the Lonya Grande district. These are in addition to those recently found in Tambolic, where many of these ancient images are concentrated.”

According to Olivera, most of the Tambolic paintings depict hunting scenes and are similar to those found in Toquepala. The artists used mainly red, brown, yellow and black pigments.

The Toquepala caves are located in the western Andes at 9,000 feet above sea level. They are noted for cave paintings depicting scenes of hunters corralling and killing a group of guanacos, a camel-like animal native to South America. Known as “chaco” in the Peruvian Andes, this hunting technique consists of forming human circles to corral the animals and either capture or kill them.

Click here for the Peruvian Times article.