i mean, when westerners say rome, they arent really talking about rome. ffs, england somehow convinced itself and the rest of the world that it's the descendant of greco-roman civilization. this was only possibly by reinterpreting rome.
so i wouldnt call it just the pop-history understanding of classical civilization. this fake all-white marble rome goes deeper. it's a bit more like the fascist fantasies about the past that never was.
also, didnt the white marble rome meme get started in the reneissance?
Fun fact! Those statues were actually painted in garish bright primary colours, it's just that the paint was expected to last a few decades at most, and when these statues were found in the renaissance, the paint had chipped away long ago, just leaving the plain marble behind.
Some were probably garish, and we can probably safely assume the ones that were out in the open were painted sort of like the statues one might see at a mid 20th century tourist trap due to the limitations of Roman paints and the need to regularly repaint them, but ones set under cover in a villa courtyard (but still outside: the better/longer lasting Roman paints apparently fucking reeked to the point that they weren't suitable for indoor paintings, hence the dominance of mosaics for decoration inside) may well have given 20th century wax statues a run for their money in terms of being eerily lifelike.
Something that's important to remember about the paint traces is that anything stuck to the statue itself would be from a basecoat, and when painting onto something like a statue or figure you need undercoats of bolder colors to help the higher coats look right. So it's likely that some portion of protected statues would have been painted to the same standard as the finer paintings that survive from that era (almost all of which are funerary paintings from Roman Egypt which were sealed away in an extremely dry and stable climate - it's likely paintings of the same quality existed everywhere, but didn't survive beyond the most fragmentary pieces).
I think there's a fundamental misalignment. The people who want to "retvrn" specifically want something stern and self serious, and do not want you or anyone else to have fun. They probably know on some level that all that Roman stuff used to be painted bright colors, but they present the stark white version because that's more in line with what they want.
Meanwhile the people who want something joyful and colorful have an abundant wellspring of modern and traditional examples to play with while designing clothes or doing paintings or whatever it is they do. Why intentionally limit yourself to a single historical period when half the fun is combining things together in unexpected ways?
It's a copy of a copy of a copy. Mideval Europe had a Rome boner, then early modern guys got a Rome boner based off mideval sources, chuds now have bonwrs for how early modern guys imagined Rome through their making shit up and earlier guys who were also prone to making shit up or being wrong. These guys are dumb as hell
how come everyone's all retvrn for plain white statues and clothes instead of like, flashy mesoamerican clothes or anything colorful really
to be fair, actual historical Roman clothing was pretty colorful, but yeah, the pop-history understanding of Rome doesn't necessarily emphasize that
i mean, when westerners say rome, they arent really talking about rome. ffs, england somehow convinced itself and the rest of the world that it's the descendant of greco-roman civilization. this was only possibly by reinterpreting rome.
so i wouldnt call it just the pop-history understanding of classical civilization. this fake all-white marble rome goes deeper. it's a bit more like the fascist fantasies about the past that never was.
also, didnt the white marble rome meme get started in the reneissance?
they still subscribe to the long debunked victorian understanding of rome
the stark white statues used to be colourfully painted
The statues were also originally painted in really bright colors, it's just a specific subset of people who latched onto the all-yt aesthetic
Fun fact! Those statues were actually painted in garish bright primary colours, it's just that the paint was expected to last a few decades at most, and when these statues were found in the renaissance, the paint had chipped away long ago, just leaving the plain marble behind.
Some were probably garish, and we can probably safely assume the ones that were out in the open were painted sort of like the statues one might see at a mid 20th century tourist trap due to the limitations of Roman paints and the need to regularly repaint them, but ones set under cover in a villa courtyard (but still outside: the better/longer lasting Roman paints apparently fucking reeked to the point that they weren't suitable for indoor paintings, hence the dominance of mosaics for decoration inside) may well have given 20th century wax statues a run for their money in terms of being eerily lifelike.
Something that's important to remember about the paint traces is that anything stuck to the statue itself would be from a basecoat, and when painting onto something like a statue or figure you need undercoats of bolder colors to help the higher coats look right. So it's likely that some portion of protected statues would have been painted to the same standard as the finer paintings that survive from that era (almost all of which are funerary paintings from Roman Egypt which were sealed away in an extremely dry and stable climate - it's likely paintings of the same quality existed everywhere, but didn't survive beyond the most fragmentary pieces).
Oh, I didn't even think about base coats. You're right, it probably was brighter and more intense so the other coats could add detail.
i will not hear guff on theodora bro her jewels got jewels on them
I think there's a fundamental misalignment. The people who want to "retvrn" specifically want something stern and self serious, and do not want you or anyone else to have fun. They probably know on some level that all that Roman stuff used to be painted bright colors, but they present the stark white version because that's more in line with what they want.
Meanwhile the people who want something joyful and colorful have an abundant wellspring of modern and traditional examples to play with while designing clothes or doing paintings or whatever it is they do. Why intentionally limit yourself to a single historical period when half the fun is combining things together in unexpected ways?
It's a copy of a copy of a copy. Mideval Europe had a Rome boner, then early modern guys got a Rome boner based off mideval sources, chuds now have bonwrs for how early modern guys imagined Rome through their making shit up and earlier guys who were also prone to making shit up or being wrong. These guys are dumb as hell
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