Last year I had a chance to go to the archaeological museums in both Athens and Istanbul and was surprised to see how many classical statues and fragments still

Last year I had a chance to go to the archaeological museums in both Athens and Istanbul and was surprised to see how many classical statues and fragments still have pigment left on them. Here's one particularly well-preserved example - from a museum in Berlin, but pretty close to the examples I saw in Athens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychrome#/media/File:Altes_Museum-Tanagra-lady_with_fan.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychrome#/media/File:Altes_M... It makes me wonder if part of the myth about Greco-Roman sculptures being pristine and unpainted came not just from the pigment wearing away over the centuries, but from the fact that 18th and 19th century printed texts tended only to feature black and white engravings. In person it's strikingly apparent that many were brightly painted.