The Polychromy of Ancient Sculpture

CLASARCH 163 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Statues in marble and bronze count among the most prominent artworks that survived from Greek and Roman antiquity. Since the first discoveries of classical sculptures in the Renaissance, ancient statues not only served as paragons for the perfect, idealized representation of the human body, they also largely coined the conventions of the visual appearance and materiality of contemporary sculpture: the whiteness of marble and the dark surface of bronze became the standards of statuary representation in modern art, and that didn’t change until very recently, despite the fact that the original polychromy of ancient sculpture was discovered already in the 18th century and had been widely discussed throughout the 19th century. It is only in recent years that we learn through new investigation methods about the color traces of classical sculptures and are able to reconstruct their original polychromy.

The seminar investigates the current state of art of the evidence for the coloring of ancient sculpture, examines recent reconstructions of the polychromy of ancient marble and bronze statues, studies the semantics of color of hair, skin, and flesh in antiquity, provides an overview of the reception of classical sculpture in modern art, but also the impact of modern sculpture and aesthetic theories on the perception of classical statues, and reconstructs the historiography of the discovery and the scholarship on ancient polychromy, including its broad popular reception in the 19th century.

Recommended Prep

The seminar addresses undergraduate students with previous exposure to Classical Archaeology (or ancient art). Graduate students are welcome and may, by arrangement with the instructor, use the course to fulfill seminar requirements; it is expected that they are able to read either French or German scholarship.