Every time I see this statue I lose my mind. How? HOW??? https://twitter.com/marinamaral2/status/1385573100163584002

Marble statues are so beautiful especially in person. Like I know intellectually that the ancient Greeks and Romans painted their statuary but part of me winces every time I think about it because plain marble just...glows. It has the slight translucence of skin

It looks so soft, which is a hell of a trick for a rock.

I do wonder how often the ancient statues (I know this one is 19th century, but it’s consciously mimicking ancient pieces like they all were at the time) were really painted with flat colors and how much they were just tinted, almost more like makeup

Of course the myth that these statues were all always white has racist underpinnings (see this excellent New Yorker article from 2018), and they also often used other stones and colored marble for different effects https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture