The Myth of Whiteness

What comes to mind when you imagine ancient Greek and Roman statues? White marble figures with sightless eyes and flowing robes? After all, that is what we see in standard textbooks and museums worldwide. And it is simply not true.

According to Marco Leona, a scientific-research director at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the "polychromy" or vibrant use of colors on neoclassical sculptures is "the best kept secret that's not even a secret." In truth, archeologists and museum curators have been scrubbing away traces of color before showcasing statues and architectural reliefs in museums for centuries.

But scholars of ancient art know otherwise: "Saying you've seen these sculptures when you've seen only the white marble is comparable to somebody coming from the beach and saying they've seen a whale because there was a skeleton on the beach," says Jan Stubbe Ostergaard, a curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen.

In reality, Greek and Roman artists used vibrant colors to intensify the emotions in the stories they were depicting. The Greeks learned their artistry from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia, where bronze sculptures were created to be as realistic as possible -- including full color. But in the process of cleaning away the dust and grime, we have whitewashed ancient art into a collective ideal that actually never existed.

In 1961, archaeologists who were excavating Aphrodisias, a Greek city in modern day Turkey, discovered flecks of color on many of the sculpture fragments: red pigment on lips, black pigment on strands of hair, bright gold on the limbs. Once a thriving oasis for high-end artists, the city of Aphrodisias fell into ruin in the seventh century after an earthquake, and the thousands of sculptural fragments have brought undeniable confirmation of color.   

How might it alter your museum experiences to envision the marble sculptures in bronze-colored darker skin tones and ancient organic dyes of purples, blues, oranges, and greens? The myth of whiteness in classical sculpture is a collective cultural error that has limited our understanding of ancient cultures. How else might we be narrowing our understanding when God is calling for a broader view, or assuming truth when we are actually quite wrong? 

Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. -- Proverbs 19:21

Keeping in mind the whitewashed sculptures of antiquity, how will you allow the Holy Spirit to broaden your perspective this week? 

God bless,

Jennie