Those garish Greeks and Romans! When the great Renaissance sculptors looked at austere Greek and Roman sculpture with awe and admiration, little did they realize that most of those statues were painted in what we would now consider a rather garish manner. Here is a famous statue of Augustus Caesar and behind it what current research suggests it looked like back in Roman times...
Sheila Hoffman looks at colour in ancient Greek sculpture...
Also check out the excellent University of Kent blog page devoted to the true colors of ancient statues..
The MET also provides an interesting web page...
The Smithsonian has an excellent page about the archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann who has done extensive and painstaking research into the painting of Greek Statues...
True Colors of Ancient Greek Sculptures
The Getty Museum also has a web page on this subject that includes a fascinating slideshow of examples such as the bust of Caligula below...
