Closeup of the mummy portrait of the young boy, dozens of complex layers of linen wrappings holding it into place over the head of the deceased. Here we can see his straight Trajanic hairstyle framing his heart-shaped face, with its overly-large dark brown eyes and small pink bow-shaped mouth.

Museum photo of the entire mummy, showing how the portrait is incorporated into the complex wrappings, which form concentric diamond shapes down the length of the torso. Gilded studs are placed at the center of each diamond (some are missing), and gilded wooden feet emerge at the bottom.

The photos from the #BritishMuseum website give a better idea of how the portrait is incorporated into the complex layers of woven linen bandages. The gilded studs and gilded feet are symbolic of the incorruptible flesh of the gods and immortality in the afterlife. 🏺 2/ #polychromy #ancientbluesky

Your daily reminder that ancient (and not so ancient) sculptural #polychromy doesn’t necessarily look ‘odd’. My photo of Nefertiti is quite flat, lacking the highlights, but it’s not far from the weeping Mary on the right. Painted sculpture never disappeared - it survived in Catholic churches.

Highly colorful relief on the front of a rectangular Etruscan funerary urn. It depicts two warriors in full armor battling one another, with one - whose helmet has fallen off (on the ground below his opponent) on his knee. It appears the standing warrior has stabbed the stumbling warrior in the neck, but the stumbling warrior may have stabbed the standing warrior in the groin. Two psychopomps - both apparently the winged female 'demon', Vanth - stand on either side of the scene, each carrying a torch. An inscription reads 'Arnsa: frauni: murinal', but the meaning is unknown. From Chiusi, 2nd c. BCE. In the collection of the Museo Archeologico Regionale "A. Salinas", Palermo, Sicily. Photo by Nick Thompson (pelegrino), Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/pelegrino/

#Polychromy is a broad term for a range of painted sculpture, terracottas, architecture and more. The vividness of ancient pigments always surprises people, and this #Etruscan funerary urn really showcases those natural colors. 🏺 1/

Chiusi, 2nd c. BCE.
📸 Nick Thompson, Flickr

Beautiful #polychromy!

My full digital reconstruction of the Mithras ‘tauroctony’ (Mithras slaying the bull) statue group, including colors and patterns on the god’s eastern style clothing. His tunic is red, with a wide Greek wave pattern border in gold against blue; his leggings have a blue-green strip down the middle with gold borders and a repeating pattern of stars/suns and moons; the patterned strip from his leggings is repeated down the center of his red Phrygian cap. His blue gold-edged cape has gold stars in the pattern of the pleiades. A yellow dog and orange and yellow snake lick the blood coming from the wound in the bull’s shoulder, and a yellow scorpion is draining the bull’s testicles. Yikes!

The fresco in the S. Maria Capua Vetere Mithraeum, showing Mithras in his colorful outfit stabbing the white bull in the shoulder, with a dog and snake licking up the flowing blood. A scorpion is draining the bull’s testicles. Mithras’ assistants, Cautes and Cautopates (who are dressed identically to him, including the Phrygian cap) stand on either side, one holding a torch upwards, the other holding it downwards. Sol and Luna are in the sky above. A very colorful fresco, photographed by Carole Raddato.

For those of you who have never seen it, a while back I did a digital reconstruction of the Mithras ‘tauroctony’ statue in the British Museum, using the colors and patterns from the fresco of the S. Maria Capua Vetere Mithraeum. #polychromy 🏺 2/

Fresco 📸 Carole Raddato

A fundamental feature of Greek ceramics and their offshoots is that they could be used. By contrast, this vase, with its lid fixed onto the body, serves a purely symbolic function. It belongs to a class of pieces associated with the site of Centuripe in Sicily. They are characterized by elaborate and delicate applied decoration and by refined polychromy executed after firing. The vase was made for the tomb. The scene shows a bride surrounded by attendants. The background is a deep, vibrant pink, and the colors of the women's clothing includes cream, yellow, blue, green, orange, lilac, and red. Their skin is very pale. One female attendant wears a grape-leaf wreath on her head and bangs on a tympanum (hand drum). The bride is veiled. The sealed vessel resembles a tholos-style tomb or temple, with lion-headed waterspouts, triglyphs and metopes. Greek, Sicilian, Centuripe, 3rd-2nd century BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (53.11.5)

This Greek terracotta vase from Centuripe, Sicily (a Greek colony) is brightly painted with a scene depicting the mostly-naked red-haired enthroned god Dionysos cradling a thyrsos in his right arm. A female figure veiled in a white himation - a priestess? - stands next to him, her face lost to time. A shield is propped up against the side of Dionysos' throne. The background here is a vivid pink madder, and the skin of the god is very realistically portrayed - pale, with reddish toning, and highlights and shadows. Even in its partially ruined state, the painting technique is obviously wonderfully realistic while the intensity of the colors make it look fantastical. The top of the vase includes architectural features, including a Lesbian kyme cornice (with remains of gilding) below lion-head waterspouts. The base is an open acanthus plant, as if the vase were growing out of its center. Probably made for the tomb. Greek, Sicilian, Centuripe, 3rd-2nd century BCE. Terracotta, gilding, and pigments. H. 15 3/4 in. (40 cm.); diameter 14 1/2 in. (36.83 cm.) Met Museum, New York (29.131.2)

Ancient #polychromy is rarely more vibrant than this type of Greek painted pottery from Centuripe, Sicily. Both vases here are funerary and have architectural elements at top, looking like small tholos-shaped temples (lion head waterspouts!). The colors are blazingly vivid. 🏺 1/

📸 me

This thymiaterion has five individually hand-made women sitting on the edge of a red-painted wellhead, with one sitting in her own high-baked chair. All are brightly painted, and each woman has a 'hat' with a cup on top for the burning of the incense. All painted slightly differently - three with orange-yellow tunics, two with red tunics; two red himatia (cloaks), two purple-black himatia, and one yellow himation. They each once carried an attribute in each hand, but several are missing. In this photo, one woman carries a yellow (meant to be gold) phiale, an offering plate, and a pomegranate; the other woman facing us carries a spindle with wool. Met Museum (2012.546)

One of the best examples of ancient #polychromy that I know of is this terracotta thymiaterion - incense burner - in the form of a group of colorfully dressed women sitting around a wellhead. The iconography reflects a local cult, perhaps of Demeter and Kore. 🏺 1/

4th c. CE. #MetMuseum
📸 me

Closeup of a section of the famed garden fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet in Pompeii. Here, a painted herm with the head of a bearded satyr supports a painted relief slap depicting either a maenad lying back on a rock, breasts exposed, or perhaps Ariadne herself. The woman wears a pale purple himation, and a tympanum (hand drum) is at her side. The head of the satyr is fully painted, and his hair and beard are a mix of red, orange and yellow strands; his ears are pink. The background of the garden is a riot of several types of greenery, including palms, and flowers. A dove sits atop the rectangular relief.

This fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet in #Pompeii shows how these reliefs looked in their proper context, in a garden. Note that both the relief and the herm upon which it sat were painted. #polychromy 🏺 3/

📸 Egisto Sani, Flickr

TERRACOTTA ROUNDEL, C2 BCE. THE BRITISH MUSEUM The Sicilian town of Centuripe in the province of Enna began its life as a village of the Siculi, but was thoroughly Greek by the C5 BCE and joined the Romans against the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War. Cicero described it as "by far the richest city in Sicily" and it produced magnificent painted terracotta dishes and architectural elements. Here we see a gently-smiling Eros, wings outspread, turning his head to look down at the folding mirror he holds in his right hand. Traces of red and white paint remain on his hair and clothes, on his wings and on the flower roundel from which he is emerging.

#ReliefWednesday this week focuses on this lovely little #terracotta roundel with an #Eros emerging from the centre of a flower, his hair braided in the centre. He holds a folding mirror in his surviving hand and shows traces of #polychromy. From #Centuripe in #Sicily, C2 BCE.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6th arr., Paris, France 2025

Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6th arr., Paris, France 2025

Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6th arr., Paris, France 2025

Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6th arr., Paris, France 2025

Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the Paris 6th arr. with its colourful interior. This is a 19th-century restoration, but the concept known as polychromy was common in churches during the 10th to 12th centuries.
#Paris #Saint-Germain-des-Prés #polychromy #photography #architecture #history

📷 from Wikipedia

Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) - what a name too ! - was the first in 1806 to write about #polychromy in ancient Greek art m. And what a colourful life he led!
#ancientbluesky

POLYCHROME BORDER MOSAIC, 325-350 CE. HOUSE OF CUPID AND PSYCHE, OSTIA The entrance vestibule to this richly-decorated C4 domus is missing any trace of its central mosaic, which probably existed because it has this remaining trace of a border. This house is famous for its opus sectile pavements and for the statue of the embracing children Cupid and Psyche, but this is one of the only polychrome mosaics left in Ostia Antica. It's somewhat rough work in three registers, with signs of bad repairs. Toward the bottom is a woven guilloche pattern of which very little remains, then a black border, and at top the outer edge has a charming wave pattern in black and white mosaic. Between the two is the final register, a repetitive floral pattern with pink and yellow tesserae petals growing toward the left from a yellow vine, which is intertwined with a black one to create an overlapping pattern of circles.

#MosaicMonday invites us to enter the beautiful #HouseofCupidandPsyche in #OstiaAntica, built on #Hadrian-era structures. This is one of the few remaining examples of #mosaic #polychromy in the city, but step in and you'll find the staggering #opussectile floors of the #domus.

LARNAX WITH THE KILLING OF TROILUS, C. 210 BCE. MUSEO DELL'ARTE SALVATA In 2015, news of the discovery of a hypogeum in the territory of Città della Pieve in Umbria, in the agrarian zone of San Donnino, began to filter out, as photos of objects from inside the tomb came to the attention of the Carabinieri. A raid on buildings of the owner of the land in question in April 2024 discovered an astonishingly rich haul: this was the tomb of the women of the powerful gens Pufna. All the grave-robbed property was taken into custody by October 2024. Here the lid shows a reclining woman in painted alabastrine gypsum, with golden jewelry, leaning on her elbow, a patera or offering plate in her other hand, resting on her knee. The box itself shows a violent scene from the Trojan War, the death of Troilus at the hands of Achilles, the one-man murder machine of the Iliad.

#SarcophagusSaturday takes us to the Octagonal Hall of the #BathsofDiocletian in #Rome, where a fresh catch of repatriated and captured #antiquities has reopened the #MuseodellArteSalvata. The traces of #polychromy on this #Etruscan #cinerary #urn add to the beauty of the work. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Terracotta statuette of a dancing woman 'Dance like no one is watching' ... Frozen while in motion, this statuette depicts a dancing woman, draped in a himation and wearing an ivy leaf wreath on her head. Is it a religious dance, Dionysia...

In addition to the bright pink (madder) pigment which once covered her himation (cloak), some red pigment can be seen on her head, probably the underpainting for her hair color.

Greek, Tarantine, 3rd c. BCE. #MetMuseum #polychromy 🏺 #ancientbluesky

ARA GUGLIELMI, 300-280 BCE. VILLA GIULIA eca . śuθic . velus . ezpus clensi. cerine This funerary cippus, found in a dig by the proprietor at Vulci on land owned by the Guglielmi family, has an inscription that spells out who was buried in the ground beneath: "This is the tomb area of Vel Ezpus (which) he built (also) for his son". This is the same formula that we find regularly in Latin funerary inscriptions, "fecit sibi et suis", "made this for himself and his family". The monument itself, its top sheared off, shows the deceased standing in a flat niche between two columns, formally dressed, possibly as a priest. The form of the cippus is strongly influenced by the Greek tombstone style called the heroon or hero's tomb, indicating the importance of the deceased.

This #Etruscan tombstone comes from #Vulci, and is now in the #VillaGiulia in #Rome. It still has traces of #polychromy, but the central figure is surrounded by an #inscription, for #EpigraphyTuesday, that echoes the same concerns of #Roman tomb inscriptions. #AncientBluesky 🏺

With loads of sculptural and architectural #polychromy, which makes me very happy! Thanks to @antiguaroma.com @parpatrimonio.bsky.social. The book is absolutely fantastic and I heavily recommend it, even if you don’t read Spanish.

🎨 She’s also the co-editor of Polychromy in the Early Modern World: 1200–1800, a groundbreaking volume that takes a transcultural approach to sculpture and painting across Europe and the Americas.
#GlobalIberia #Polychromy #MaterialCulture
(4/6)

Love it - glorious #polychromy! The Brinkmanns chose the Phrasikleia Kore, the original of which is in Athens, to reconstruct, below at the #MetMuseum. Different eras of reconstruction, different, styles, but both introduce people to the concept of how pigments were used on sculpture.

Pale terracotta Nike in a peplos with a large overfold. On her head is an egg-shaped incense burner - a thymiaterion - with an openwork lid to allow the smoke to escape. There’s a dove on top of the lid. The Nike gestures with her right hand, while pulling her garment to the side with her left. her wings are very stylized, almost exactly like sphinx statues from this time period, hard-edged and curved inwards at the top. You can see the shadow of painted feathers. Getty Villa Museum (86.AD.681)

Closeup of the Nike’s head and torso. She has plaited hair that falls to her shoulders in braids, and wears a stephane or diadem. Here we can see the brilliant blue traces on her peplos and diadem (undoubtedly Egyptian Blue) and red on her peplos and wings.

This Greek terracotta winged Nike - the goddess of victory - supports a thymiaterion, an incense burner. The figure’s face, pose, and peplos look very much like a larger statues of korai. Look close and you’ll see brilliant remains of pigments. #polychromy

Greek, early 5th c. BCE. from Sicily. 🏺

FUNERARY STELE, 500-490 BCE. CAPITOLINE MUSEUMS This beautiful Greek relief in Thasian marble shows a young woman in full profile facing right, holding a dove in her hand. It is a funerary stele, probably from Athens, and is of the same Ionian school of sculpture as the Ludovisi Throne, though not from the same place. This is archaic Greek sculpture just before it bursts into full classical bloom: the young woman's face is somewhat hieratic, with an eye as seen from the front, not the side, but the folds of her chiton are drawn with exquisite delicacy. A number of original Greek works were found in the same area, suggesting the original collector had a particular interest in this type of art. This comes from the Horti Lamiani in the area of today's piazza Vittorio. They were the creation of the consul L. Aelius Lamia, a friend of Tiberius, and Lamia left the gardens to him. They were richly redeveloped by the emperor Caligula, who used the Horti as his main residence.

For #ReliefWednesday we're admiring a delicate #relief from #Athens, bought in antiquity by a consular collector and used to decorate his gardens, the #HortiLamiani in #Rome. Once covered in bright #polychromy, when this was discovered in the 1880s it had lost all its colour. #ClassicsBluesky 🏺

The statue of Juno, 3/4 of her left profile. Here we can see better the dark maroon pattern on her yellow-golden peplos, It's a series of palmettes and apparently stripes above that (the material is folded, and we can't tell exactly what would be above the palmettes). The disc earring is very large and perfectly round. Juno's wavy hair is parted in the middle and pulled back into a bun (which we can't see, but I've seen photos of the back of this statue, and it's very detailed, which means it was meant to be seen from every angle). Because this statue fragment only includes her head, bust, and shoulders, we can't know for sure that she didn't carry a sword and shield, but we would expect to see her wearing a goatskin, if she were in her aspect as a war goddess. It's more likely that this is Juno as a protector of the home, the clan, and queen of the gods.

This photo, taken 3/4 view from the sculpture's other side (it's nearly life-size) shows the detailed design on her peplos. You can see a repeating palmette pattern. The diadem has a row of flowers, and from this angle you can better see the one intact disc earring. 🏺 #polychromy

CINERARY URN, 80-100 CE. CENTRALE MONTEMARTINI This extremely richly-decorated urn of Luni marble was found in 1931 in the necropolis of via Ostiensis. Its tabula probably had the deceased's name painted onto it; traces of polychromy can be found in the crevices of the relief work. Two heads of Jupiter Ammon protrude from the sides of the urn, with a garland tied to the horns of the god's heads carved with pomegranates and pinecones, with points of shadow created using the short drill. The urn emerges from a cluster of acanthus leaves and stands on a leafy round base. The lid, too, is decorated with acanthus leaves and, at the top, four theatrical masks form a pinnacle. Cremation and inhumation were both practiced by the Romans, but cremation was more frequently used until the mid-C3, when burial became the norm. Most people were buried simply; if you had a terracotta sarcophagus or cinerary urn you were already wealthier than most. Marble urns and sarcophagi meant you were elite.

For a late #SarcophagusSaturday we have a beautiful C1 CE #cinerary #urn from the via Ostiensis #necropolis. This was once richly painted: #cremation was for the well-off, and this urn must have shone with #polychromy. #ClassicsBluesky 🏺

A woman in a long white tunic with red clavi (two vertical stripes) and a yellow belt under the breasts reclines on the lid of this terracotta cinerary urn. Her left elbow is propped up on a pillow, and she holds a leaf-shaped patera (offering bowl) in her right hand. She looks up and to her right, almost wistful. She has dark brown hair, medium brown eyes, and is wearing a yellow (meant to look like gold) diadem or perhaps a cloth binding her hair. On the chest below is a battle scene in relief, with two men in armor and carrying colorful shields swinging their swords against three other men, one of whom has stumbled and is on the ground, his shield raised for protection. Etruscan script is painted in red above the scene and on the left edge, giving the name of the deceased and her husband: Thana Vipinei Ranazunia, wife of Creice. Etruscan, 2nd century BCE. Met Museum, New York (96.9.223a, b)

This polychrome Etruscan terracotta cinerary urn retains the name of the deceased: Thana Vipinei Ranazunia, wife of Creice. The standardized battle demonstrates that the subject on that part of the urn often has no apparent connection with the gender of the deceased. #polychromy 🏺

#MetMuseum 📸 me

LARNAX WITH THE COMBAT BETWEEN ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES, 200-150 BCE. VILLA GIULIA This urn, which shows traces of the original polychromy, belongs to a group of terracotta urns made from moulds produced by workshops in the area of the Etruscan city of Chiusi. They were mass produced for customers who could not afford the more expensive alabaster or travertine urns. The lid is in the shape of a semi-recumbent male figure holding a votive plate (patera) in his right hand. The scene depicted on the front of the case, framed by two winged female genii (Vanth) holding torches, shows the duel to the death between Oedipus' sons, Eteocles and Polynices. who, after the death of their father, were vying for the government of the city of Thebes. This legend, set in the heroic age, is part of the saga of the Seven Against Thebes, which the great Greek tragedian Aeschylus staged in Athens in 467 BCE. The name "Eteocles" may be an authentic survival from the Bronze Age. It appears in royal genealogies at both Thebes and Orchomenos, and an Assyrian tablet (the language of international diplomacy in the Bronze Age) from about 1260 BCE found in the archives of Pylos mentions an "Etewokleweios" (full of the archaic digamma "w" that disappears with classical Greek) as harassing Hittite allies on the western coast of Anatolia.

#SarcophagusSaturday takes us to the #VillaGiulia where we find this lovely cinerary urn or #larnax with a male figure on the lid and fratricide on the front. Some #polychromy survives, as well. #ClassicsBluesky 🏺

Indeed I am - just haven't posted about it yet. I gave a hearty congratulations to @pompei79.bsky.social for her work on this much-needed study. #polychromy

Below is one of the best extant examples of painted Roman sculpture. Unexpectedly, this cornucopia fragment was apparently found in Corbridge and somehow survived in a wet environment (I’d expect maybe in Egypt, but …). *Look* at these colors. 🏺 #polychromy

📸 Corbridge Roman Town Museum

The Amazons were a legendary tribe of female warriors whose homeland was at the edge of the known Greek world in northern Asia Minor. Ancient literature preserves many tales of battles fought much earlier between the Greeks and the Amazons, who sided with the Trojans in the Trojan War. Considered barbaric and uncivilized, the Amazons became typecast as enemies of the Greeks and were often substituted, particularly in art, for the Greeks' more immediate adversaries to the east, the Persians. This ceramic horse and rider is similar in style to figures carved in relief on the roughly contemporary sculpted frieze encircling the Parthenon, sections of which featured Amazons battling Greeks. As was also common on stone sculpture, details, such as the eyes and garment of the Amazon, were added here in colored pigments; much of the original painted surface remains visible. The figures make up the body of a drinking vessel called a rhyton, a rare form inspired by Near Eastern vessels, usually in the shape of animal heads. Wine poured into the top would come out of a small hole at the front of the base. The vessel was probably made in Athens for export, eventually finding its way to the Nubian capital of Meroë in present-day Sudan, where it was deposited in the fourth century B.C. as a treasured heirloom in the tomb of a royal child and excavated by archaeologists in 1921. DESCRIPTION Traces of paint are still visible on the seated figure, the horse, and the base. The mounted figure wears a helmet with a large, crested plume and a large ear-like appendages on the sides. The redware rhyton depicts four figures (Persians and Greeks) in combat. It is signed on the base by Sotades the potter. PROVENANCE From Meroe, South Cemetery, Pyramid 24. 1921: excavated by the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition; assigned to the MFA in the division of finds by the government of Sudan.

This Greek rhyton in the form of a polychrome Amazon on horseback was excavated from one of the pyramids of Meroe, ancient Nubia, the tomb of a royal child. Similar in style to the contemporaneous riders on the Parthenon frieze. 🏺 #polychromy #ancientbluesky

440 BCE. #MFABoston

Happy birthday old fruit!

The #Roman Emperor #Hadrian was born on 24th January 76 C.E. in Spain.

Here is a bit of #polychromy reconstruction - although he’s not looking too impressed with his birthday cake…

📸 Us, Roman Museum in Nice

#Archaeology #Skystorians
#AncientBluesky #AncientRome

The #PolychroMon project team is also conducting research into the #polychromy of Roman stone monuments from the Danube provinces in #Hungary. Recently, they assessed the #Mithraeum in #Fertőrákos. The local mayor János Palkovits (see pic) extended a warm welcome to the team🌟

The five female bronze statues are part of the statuary of the Villa dei Papiri (Villa of the Papyri), a luxury villa on the outskirts of Herculaneum (Ercolano), where they were found in 1754. The Villa was destroyed and buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. This sculpture group represents five young women standing on their right legs while the left ones are slightly bent and moved away from the bodies. They are dressed in Doric peploi buckled on the shoulders, and each one is portrayed in different postures and with different hairstyles. Their faces are delicate and animated by the eyes, the corneas of which are made of bone or ivory and the irises and pupils of grey or black stone. Defined erroneously as “dancers” by Winckelmann in the 18th century, the statues were recognized as hydrophorai (water carriers) at the end of the 19th century and finally in the 20th century they were identified as the Danaids, the fifty daughters of Danaus the king of Egypt, condemned to fetch water for eternity after killing their respective husbands who were nothing but their cousins the girls did not want to marry. However, recent research instead suggest that they are Appiads, water nymphs of the Aqua Appia - the first aqueduct in Rome - sculpted by the artist Stephanos. They are reproductions related to the Augustan Age (3rd century BCE — last quarter of the first century BCE), derived from an original subject of the Classical Age, very popular in the Augustan Age, and reproductions of a similar group which was on exhibition in the temple of Apollo Palatine in Rome in 28 BCE. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN inv. 5621)

Ancient #polychromy doesn’t just mean the use of pigments on stone, ceramic, et al. It can also refer to the use of metals to create color. When this bronze Danaid was new, it might have resembled polished dark gold, with copper and silver inlays. Incredible to see intact eyes. 1/ 🏺

#MANN 📸 me