Greeks and Romans ruined their sculpture with ugly paint

.....

Momma Mia! Have you ever been in some Italian-American homes in Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, or Bensonhurst?

Of course, the Romans had some questionable taste!

Remember the Sheik in Beverly Hills who had pubic hair painted on the statues outside his mansion on Sunset Blvd?

Thank goodness the Victorians came along with their subtle style and subdued color palette

R4 How is that 'Victorian' when the U.S. was independent before Victoria came to the throne (in the UK)?

I don't know, r5, perhaps you should ask Wiki...

"Hale House is a Queen Anne style Victorian mansion built in 1887 in the Highland Park section of northeast Los Angeles"

R6 I don't care what Wikipedia says: I don't understand how that house is 'Victorian'. I've never seen anything like it in the UK and I grew up in a house built in the Victorian period too (it even has the date on it).

It appears those spicy Victorians were just as subtle on the inside...

R8 Please provide some examples of houses looking like that on the outside? It's not Victorian. It's some kind of hideous American monstrosity.

Oh, yeah, you Brits were all about subtle good taste during the Victorian era 🙄

R10 None of those houses look like the one you posted.

^ I guess there was more than one Victorian style. What's your point? The Romans did not corner the market on bad taste. Wealthy people with tacky taste can be found anywhere in history

R12 More than one Victorian style when Queen Victoria succeeded the throne after the U.S. became independent? Why can't you just acknowledge that you have your own style?

^ 😂 Ok, wacko, whatever you say. Go stand in a mirror and argue

Paywalled. But the Greek and Roman style was heavily influenced by Near Eastern art and architecture like Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian. The colors were often symbolic and represented divinity. I don't think they're ugly more we're just so used to the myth that the statues and buildings were always white marble due to Hollywood and cartoons perpetuating it. Just like how we're weirded out by accurate pics of dinosaurs with feathers thanks to Hollywood and books that traditionally showed them with just scales.

R15 Learn to use a web archive site and you can read the paywallled articles.

Just past the website address in and search.

R16 Cool! Thanks

r2 that's likely a Persian Palace.

[quote]Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, or Bensonhurst?

Those neighborhoods have all kinds of different ethnic groups now. I know it's forever 1987 on Datalounge, but it's been decades since those neighborhoods were exclusively Italian.

More than half of Bensonhurst is Asian and Latino now

I saw this exhibit today. The colors seemed amateurish, almost childish. I know we aren't used to seeing them painted, but I found them actually ugly. The larger than life statues that were bronzed weren't too bad.

I had forgotten how beautiful those rooms are at the Met, especially in the bright, noon sun. The works are, of course, extraordinary.

Of course they used color. Why wouldn’t they?

Because before Technicolor the world was in black and white.

I also wonder if their paints were all that sophisticated back then. Maybe theirs colors were rather limited

Egyptian sculptures are very similar and I think if we had always seen Egyptian art in B/W or sepia, we'd be aghast when seeing the actual colors.

Mesoamerican and Chinese and Indian and Indonesian and aboriginal Australian art often uses the same broad array of colors, too. I kind of feel like the joke is on us for not realizing Greeks and Romans would have painted statuary and sculptures

I'm much more intrigued by the similarities between ancient cultures that were separated by too much space to visit one another. Mesoamericans and Egyptians used similar colors, similar costumes, not very dissimilar artwork, both built pyramids and centered cities around them. Some gods were similar, with animals or animal-human hybrids being their chief deities. Fascinating.

The best object exhibitioned.

[quote] This unusual vessel in the form of male genitalia was used to store oil, presumably of an erotic or medicinal nature. Lines of black glaze meticulously applied to imitate pubic hair convey a surprisingly lifelike appearance. Similar pubic hair was once painted on the marble kouros nearby, indicating that even in large-scale sculpture it was not uncommon for details of the male body to be depicted in paint.

The painted ancient Greek statues actually resemble some Native American costumes.

They also look more like today's Greek culture and less of another world.

I love this one. Legend of Zelda come to life!

The interesting bit here is NOT Priam though ...

[quote] The kneeling figure on this vase, identified as the legendary Trojan king Priam, wears a richly ornamented costume that the Greeks traditionally associated with foreigners from the east. Although vase painting provided a limited color palette, white, yellow, and red paint could be added to suggest different colors, textures, and materials. Here, yellow on Priam’s cap and belt, and on the winged boots of the messenger god Hermes behind him, gives the effect of gold.

R7, you are one stupid fuck who is woefully ignorant of 19th century American architecture. The house pic you dismiss as not being “Victorian” makes that painfully obvious.

R31, Priam was a beta.

That's actually an interesting sounding exhibit - and, if you wanted it to be, very pointed.

R5, the term "Victorian" is generally accepted in American English as descriptive of the architecture and decorative arts of the period roughly contiguous with that of the British monarch. In more recent times, other terms have been applied to specific categories of US-American art and architecture, such as "American Renaissance" and "Gilded Age".

The Victorian house cited in the picture is something of an anomaly - outside of San Francisco and California in general, most 19th century exterior palettes in the US tended to be more subdued (although seldom to the hideously drab effect of British Victorian architecture).

^ Well, actually both are true...

"While San Francisco’s row of famous brightly-colored Victorian homes known fondly as the ‘Painted Ladies’ is what might come to mind when thinking about the Victorian color palette, the original colors were actually much more muted. Various hues of ochre, russet, beige, brown and taupe were chosen because of the idea that the house should blend with its natural surroundings.

Brightly colored pigmentation was much more expensive to produce at the beginning of the Industrial revolution, and naturally-derived pigments were the norm. Muted pigments didn’t fade, also making them a more economical choice. But as time marched on and brighter pigments became cheaper to produce, Victorian style houses proudly wore bright colors with the dramatic contrasts we’ve come to know and love today."

All these uncut penises are so very disturbing. These people were truly barbarians. Thank God for the Jews who gave us the cut penis and the American musical. Without them the world would have really been a total nightmare.

It's weird how some people tried to turn the now white statues into a racist conspiracy.

No one was trying to perpetuate a "myth" that the statues were always white. That's just how modern people have seen and known them.

The statues all look Mediterranean. Stocky figure, curves on the women, curly hair, very long noses, pouty lips, big curly beards on the patriarchs and the colored frescos and mosaics show olive complexions and mostly dark hair and eyes. Hollywood does cast British, Irish and Northern European looking actors to play the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. As if those people wouldn't burn in the sun.

Ancient Greeks and Romans tended to be on the fair side. To this day many Italians are fair, Americans think all Italians look like Al Pacino but that is not true at all.

R40 Americans are idiots. DLers here for some reason think white people are only Casper the Ghost white or just pink. And that olive skin, dark hair and brown eyes makes someone a person of color. Al Pacino is still white to me as is Ralph Macchio, Sal Mineo, Leah Remini and Sofia Coppola.

I know it gets into all kinds of unhealthy modern connotations, but we really should know more about the Aryans r40. They were the fair-haired people who spread into a lot of places, including Greece and Italy. And of course that led to various ideas of who was naturally "in charge" and who was naturally not. And even centuries later, the poorer, darker people were more likely to emigrate to the U.S., leading to a particular view of what an Italian or Greek looks like.

And then they get the joy of fitting into all the neuroses of American views on who is white and who is black and how that is the single most important thing about you and all that crap.

So, only Northern Europeans are white? Since when?

It's a whole thing, r43. It's a profoundly stupid whole thing. But it's a whole thing, with many, many arguments, not just here in the U.S. but of course among European "race scientists" as well.

The statues are fascinating and beautiful.The Washington post headline is typical drooling idiot clickbait.

Ummm Aryans are Iranians. Iranians can range from fair to very brown. And there wasn't this color hierarchy nonsense until the colonization of the Americas where chattel slavery became the norm.

Well, I think they're tremendous!

Like black, white comes in many shades.

More like Iranians are Aryans, r46, plenty of Aryans aren't Iranian, of course. But it is one of those funny little facts of history that Iran means "land of the Aryans." Sort of the way that literal "caucasians" aren't quite in the right part of the world that white supremacists would like them to be.

Americans seem to have this bizarre fantasy that the world is divided into blonde very pale northern Europeans and dark complexioned Africans. It's like no one else exists. I guess it's a result of the ugly and cruel history of slavery. People are still obsessed with that binary. Ages ago I saw some white Twitter personality snipe about some instagirl engaging in blackface. The instagirl was half Southeast Asian ( I think Vietnamese) and half northern European and had a deep tan and full lips. It was like no one could even consider that those traits might come naturally to other groups.

Northern Italians look very "white," for the most part. Light hair and eyes. Blue eyes are not uncommon among Southern Italians, as well.

The "people of color" thing is very tricky and sort of silly. The Spanish colonists were obsessed with who were Penisulares (born in Spain or Portugal), Creoles (born in the Americas, white but sort of suspect), Mixed (with native blood) and actual native. Also later, of course, bottom of the heap: black slaves, and then all those little categories: maroon, octaroon, etc, depending on just exactly how black you were. It's crazy and silly, but of course millions of people died or lived lives of misery because of this silliness, so not exactly hilarious.

And of course, today, Latin Americans are all "people of color" just showing how weird and arbitrary the whole damn thing is.

Also there's many swarthy people in England, Ireland, Germany, France, Poland, Russia and Switzerland. Every race is diverse in skin tone and phenotypes. Europe is an incredibly tiny continent and I find Europeans generally look alike to the untrained eye with certain areas having a type of look but not always.

African tribes can vary by skin tone and North, South Africa and East Africa there's many naturally light-skinned people with little to no European mixture. Race scientists tried to argue Ethiopians are Caucasians but they are actually indigenous to the Horn of Africa. North Africans are indigenous to North Africa contrary to beliefs on both eurocentric and Afrocentric sides. Egyptians are Semitic closely related to Arabs. While Moroccans and Libyans are Berbers who are just light-skinned Africans that have similar appearance to Europeans just by coincidence. Very similar to how Ainu, a group indigenous to Northern Japan have an appearance that looks Eurasian but they have no European admixture.

R50, no, the odd thing is thinking that Americans still view white people that way. That view has been over for a long time.

White people are much more diverse than blonde hair and blue eyes. It's racialists who can't accept this reality.

@r50, Fuck off, asshole "expert on everything American" You don't know your ass from a hole in the ground

Tom Cullen is 100% Welsh but he could easily pass for Spanish.

R56, yeah, he's white.

Yeah, I don't think you quite get us r50. We are extremely attuned to these gradations, really in an unhealthy way. It's kind of a DL joke, but there really was a debate on whether Italians could be "white." Same with the Irish. It's because we get obsessed with exact degrees of whiteness. We definitely don't imagine some sharp dichotomy between Scandinavians and Africans. We know there are all these other "degrees of whiteness" and historically we have been absolutely obsessed with them. It's insane, honestly.

And I do not mean to get into a Americans vs Europeans debate, but come on. Europeans were the original slave traders and then the original murderous colonists, and then throughout the Imperialism era you guys LOVED this shit about superior and inferior races. That does not let us Americans off the hook, but come the fuck on!

The British thought Portuguese were half-breeds and used them as an example to oppose miscegenation in their colonies. A lot of this idea of racial purity and the concept of hypodescent comes from the British colonization that pursued genocide and creating a clear-cut underclass of blacks and Natives. Any admixture made you nonwhite, nonhuman and thus disenfranchised which strengthened the white supremacy. This was opposite to the French, Spanish and Portuguese method of assimilation through miscegenation and Catholic christening.

Since white-passing was so commonplace in The US. So common many Americans with old roots are shocked to do DNA ancestry and find African. When you had Jewish, Southern Italian, Greek, Arab and other immigrants coming that were a bit darker than the standard English-German-Irish-Scottish mix. That raised some racial panic and anxiety. Especially since these immigrants didn't initially have the same prejudices and had no issues taking jobs associated with Black people and living in black neighborhoods. Of course, the discrimination these European immigrants faced made them aspire to whiteness and eventually earn through engaging in anti-black racism. The white label in The US was restrictive originally but now it includes all Europeans, as well as North Africans and Middle Easterners (though many of them don't ID as white anymore). It's really a social identity term and has no bearing in science. Most of these groups had to be white to get social acceptance not because they really believed in that prior. Most people outside The US identify by their nationality, their culture and their religion with skin color being an afterthought.

So the Metropolitan Museum Of Art is now showing painted plastic statues to be more "realistic"?

Wow have things gone down since the glory days of Phillipe de Montebello.

And before anyone says it, yes, I know Europeans were NOT the original slave traders. There was slavery going back to the dawn of time and a slave trade. That is true. But that Atlantic slave trade, and that idea that Africans are natural slaves, that begins with Portugal and Spain and later England and France and I think the Dutch. And eventually of course, Americans. Really should be be clear about that.

[quote] as well as North Africans and Middle Easterners (though many of them don't ID as white anymore)

I knew a woman from Egypt who did social work in Appalachia for awhile. She really confused the hell out of everyone. They really, really needed to know if she was white or black, and they just could not decide.

R60, on one hand you have some people who used to identify as white who don't do so anymore.

Then you have people who now identify as white when in the past they didn't. It's fluid.

Europeans brought slaves to America it was Americans who finally abolished the practice. Got it?

R62 You're right. People try to derail this by pointing out slavery is a universal crime practiced by many cultures which is true. But the idea blacks are inherently inferior and thus meant to be slaves first originated with the colonization of the Americas. It wasn't like that at first, it started out as indentured servitude which included black, white and Native servants. Then the colonists found it more profitable to create a slave style economy to extract the resources. White slaves would run away and blend in, so that didn't work. Native slaves would run away, knew the environment and blend in with their tribe. But black slaves were perfect because they stood out, were foreign and thus easily recognized. Also the South, Caribbean and the Amazon region are tropical which black people were more physically adapted to, so could work it better. Over time this morphed into a chattel system where slavery was inheritable based on matrilineal line and hypodescent. And to the pint where even free people of color were considered just runaway slaves. These slaves were forbidden to read, write, own their own property, weren't allowed to go anywhere on their own, the men and women were breeding horses and their children were taken away from them frequently.

And while the Arabs who enslaved Africans didn't necessarily see them as inferior due to being black. If they were Muslim, they were equals by their religion. Slavery in Africa was never permanent and usually were war prisoners but slaves could own property, sue, buy their freedom and get married. Slavery in the ancient world was never about skin color, again it was usually prisoners of wars or criminals.

Ancient Rome's slavery is similar to American but the difference was it wasn't based on skin color. And slaves in Rome gained more rights and personhood over time while American slaves lost more rights over time though slaveowners did loosen up on cruelty when the slave trade was ended.

I would disagree a little r60. There was definitely more mixing with the Spanish colonists than the English colonists in the Americas, but everyone was obsessed with where you fell on the scale of whiteness. In the Spanish colonies, Peninsulares (truly white, born in Europe), Creole (white, but well, not quite white enough), and then various mixed-race combos determined where you stood in everythingn.

R55 touched a nerve didn't I bitch? About what I'm not quite sure. R58 No. I have seen this weirdness repeatedly over the last few years. Some pop tart like Ariana Grande or Kardashian does a photo shoot with tanned skin and people ( always American) start whining about blackface. A person of southern European or Armenian descent will look that way naturally after some time in the sun. Blackface is a tradition of mockery towards people of African descent done by white people who would paint their skin black. This was abhorrent. Someone of Southeast Asian or Spanish or armenian heritage having a tan is not blackface. But people are two fixated on the appearance of 2 ethnic groups in particular ( African American and northern European American) to give the existence of anyone else a thought.

R6 6 I agree. The American system ( and the sheer amount of time it continued) was unusually bad compared to many other countries. It's quite unbelievable how many people are still in denial of this reality.

R68 but a lot of the time it's young, woke POCs who are trying to force the idea of what white people are supposed to look like. Of course, they are joined by many woke whites many of them being women.

yup, exactly r66. After Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia, the terror was that white indentured servants and black slaves could work together. It was vital to prevent that from ever happening, and a whole lot of laws about skin color had to come into effect.

Before that, things were actually loose. There is an old English common law rule that the status of the father determines the status of the child. Before, there were actually a couple of cases where a black woman married to a white man could free her kids based on that principal, successfully. Afterwards, Virginia nailed that shit down. Any half-black kid of a black mother was a slave. Also no "black woman married to a white man" but that's another thing.

So did the Egyptians - the Sphinx was originally extremely garish.

R67 True and it's the same with Louisiana which was controlled by France and later Spain. Creoles of color were notoriously colorstruck and practiced inbreeding and obsessively trying to marry their daughters to French or Spanish men in order to maintain their privilege. They had slaves and servants who were darker skinned and were even their relatives. When The US took control of Louisiana and effectively enforced Jim Crow style laws of hypodescent. The Creoles were devastated they were no longer a separate class and now were classed as blacks who they looked down upon. Even into the 20th century Creoles of color would claim to be French and Spanish or a little Indian and distanced themselves from blacks. Even infamous jazz musicians who were Creole and played in black bands were intensely colorist like Jelly Roll Morton. Then the 1960s came and a new social consciousness of Black Pride arose and Creoles began embracing being African Americans.

HOSTESS PANTS!!!

Honestly, r68, I think you are getting into a different thing, not traditional American white/black racism, but the whole weird world of wokeism and people of color and who is allowed to do this, that, or the other thing. As I said, I think "people of color" may be one of the most arbitrary and silly designations a silly and arbitrary century has invented. It's like Asian. Nobody is "Asian." They are Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Pakistani, Filipino or whatever. But we have decided there is this category called Asian. It's silly. It's ridiculous. But there it is, and therefore it MATTERS INTENSELY. We do that in this country. Constantly, and we are very serious about it, even when we are being incredibly ridiculous about it. Maybe especially then.

"But Ethel, they are inspired by the reconstruction of a marble archer in the costume of a horseman of the peoples to the north and east of Greece, from the west pediment of Temple of Aphaia, Variant C! The horsemen wore them when they gave smart dinner parties!"

was wondering when Vivian Vance would enter this conversation! Thank you, Viv! And welcome.

R70 A lot of this Afrocentric conspiracy is a product of America's abysmal education system. Conspiracy theories spread like wildfire and all people fall for it. There's no critical thinking, philosophy or debate being taught in public schools anymore. Now, West Africa is a region with a very rich and fascinating history itself and East Africa like Ethiopia and Sudan and Zimbabwe have interesting histories as well. I'm black and frankly dislike this trend of claiming other cultures as "black." It's hypocritical. African American culture as well as Caribbean and Latin American culture has a lot of remnants of West Africa in it from the worship practices, art, hairstyling and cuisine. It's actually disrespectful to certain groups like Jews and Native Americans who were also oppressed beyond belief to claim them as black. It makes no sense and reeks of self-hatred. The Egypt controversy can at least be partially explained by the fact it's Africa but Africa isn't one group, it's a huge continent with hundreds of ethnic groups and Egyptians are mainly Semitic people with some SSA admixture.

Not sure what you mean by Afrocentric conspiracy. I know there are some radicals here and there, but honestly, do you think black people control education in the US? Do you think Ron DeSantis is imposing Afrocentric education in Florida?

R79 No I said people of all backgrounds fall for conspiracy crap online. It's a result of America's poor education system that doesn't teach logic and critical thought. You have people who believe aliens built the pyramids, in the Illuminati, QAnon that Democrats are pedo sex traders, white supremacists who believe whites are being targeted for extinction, the earth is flat, Covid isn't real, vaccines cause autism etc. There is a ton of conspiracy theories that the ancient Jews and Egyptians and Native Americans were black and the current ones are actually imposters. It's just a sad state of society in general.

About Egypt, there was for many years, really at least a century, an attempt in the Euro-American education system, an attempt to make Egypt have pretty much nothing to do with sub-Saharan Africa. Egypt was supposed to be Mediterranean and never African. Some people want to over-correct and turn Cleopatra into Beyonce, but the truth is SOME correction is needed. The black, or at least blacker Africans of Namibia and other African nations, were not in fact cut off from Egypt, or invisible, or some other world that barely touched the "real" Egypt of the pyramids. Egypt is in fact somewhat more African than Victorian explorers wanted to believe. There is an interaction all along the Nile River, even the parts that suffer from negritude.

I may agree with you more than I thought r80. The whole Blacks are the real Jews, everyone stop that shit. Blacks are the real blacks, which you know, led out of slavery after hundreds of years, yeah, indisputable, and pretty impressive. Nobody needs to invent weird biblical heritages for themselves. Everyone stop that nonsense. And the irony is that the Exodus is the thing that was probably actually invented and fictional. No Moses, no Egyptian captivity, no wandering in the desert, nope, none of it was probably actually true.

R81 Absolutely. The Middle East in general was very diverse. The Bible in fact mentions Ethiopians and Kushites several times and they interacted with the Israelites. Ancient Egypt was metropolitan and had Africans just as it had Southern Europeans like Greeks, Macedonians and Romans and later Turks. There were absolutely black Pharaohs that ruled for a dynasty. Egypt isn't really the same as the rest of North Africa.

More than that, r83, they did not have this thing where there are black people (inferior) and white people (superior) and we must learn from the white people and never the black people. That shit comes millennia later. Pyramids may actually have started in Namibia, although that is honestly not clear. But the whole idea of oh damn, these black people want to conquer us, can't we be conquered by white people instead, that is what becomes such crap. And of course, the idea that they would despise the Namibians and look up to the Greeks, no never. Not what was happening at all in that region. If anything, those Greek mercenaries would seem more barbaric and difficult to the average Egyptian, if they ever saw one.

@r68, You're drunk... AND stupid, go home

R37 The basis for American Musical Theater came from Opera by Uncut and clean assholed Italians. Then Gilbert and Sullivan who might not have been mutilated. The Jews and Britons have one thing in common they both have dirty assholes!

Well this is taking a turn. Uncut Opera. The final frontier.

[quote] The Jews and Britons have one thing in common they both have dirty assholes!

Always? Like now and forever? No cleaning possible, ever? This is new to the world of medicine and hygiene.

I think it is just hilarious how for years people have held up the Greek and Romans, for their exquisite art and architecture, because we were all seeing it incorrectly. To them it would appear we've spent centuries admiring and trying to emulate what would appear to be blank canvases.

Where are the Romans today?

The fact that ancient sculpture was polychromed was known from the 19th century onward at the very least.

The Philadelphia Museum of art was designed to represent a colored ancient building.

one makes do with the materials and palettes one has available at the time

These statues are missing any kind of shadow in that they would’ve had. You also must realize that the statues would’ve been seen in temples with no windows by candlelight.

^ Yep - it's a distasteful aspect of Orientalism. Egyptian society was multicultural. Though the majority of Egyptians were a similar skintone to modern Arabs, there were heaps of black Egyptians and Asiatic Egyptians. Skin colour wasn't a big deal there but you do see it represented in art.

My reply was to R84 - I guess I was too slow writing my post!

[quote]I think it is just hilarious how for years people have held up the Greek and Romans, for their exquisite art and architecture, because we were all seeing it incorrectly. To them it would appear we've spent centuries admiring and trying to emulate what would appear to be blank canvases.

The Greeks and Romans created the Western World, and Western Civilization. We owe everything to them.

R81 Macedonians were Greeks! They spoke dialect of Greek. They also played in The Olympics which were only open to Greeks.

R96 I didn't say we didn't, only that we got it wrong. Look at St. Paul's in London, or the vast majority of official DC, they were designed to evoke an ideal that didn't exist. Instead of gleaming white marble, every inch should be covered in color.

R84 but some of these cultures did see themselves as superior and that others should learn from them. It just wasn't based solely on skin color.

Sadly, they seem to have forgotten about the Etruscans in that exhibition.

Romans 'stole' a fucking lot of ideas from the Etruscans, like the fasces and other symbols of power. Also some words are actually of Etruscan origion. "Person" and "satellite" are commonly known to be Roman loanwords, but in fact Romans borrowed those words from Etruscan "persun" (initially meaning a mask covering a person's face, later used to mean person or personality) and "satles" (companion).

Why can’t historians fully translate Etruscan?

How hard could it be?

Has the Yellow Skin Troll weighed in?

This thread is proof that people are obsessive about identifying others by race and segregating them by race because the thread is actually about ancient marble statues having once been painted in carnival colors, and in short order it turned into a debate about who is genuinely 'white' and what countries are whiter than others and more racist than others.

So weird. Even on DataLounge I would not have predicted people would leap from "painted statues" to "racially charged debate and name calling."

R101 because while there are lots of funerary inscriptions in Etruscans, there are hardly any coherent texts left - and by "hardly any" I mean hardly any. So while there's quite a lot of knowledge about names of Etruscan gods, words for family relations, and vocational terms thanks to those grave inscriptions, there's hardly any knowledge about so many other spheres of life and not a lot of knowledge about what happened among the Etruscans. Most of what we know about them we know thanks to Roman writers --- and while Romans were emulating the Etruscans a lot, they were often judging them in a rather condescending way (particularly when they were envious of Etruscan power).

So, to get this back to the statues ... are there a lot of nude ones? Um, asking for a friend.

Interesting, r104. I did not know that.

Persians are cauccasions

Persians are momma's boys.

"Persians are cauccasions"

Oh, dear!

Blasians are Barbizons!

Nobody knows who the Etruscans were. DNA testing has shown that they were not related to the present-day inhabitants of the region. Etruscans are a huge mystery.

Not so sure about that R111.

The results of the large genomic study of Etruscans:

I don't think the paint is ugly. The forms of the sculpture are rather basic and in the past livens it up.

I can't say you're wrong r103, it is a very big big deal in our culture and the other night I just felt like talking about it.

More on topic, it does crack me up that refinement is all about restraint and a lack of color, when our models for classical refinement totally rejected that idea. That is a wonderful irony in art history. Even now, all those beige and gray and white apartments that are supposed to be the height of refinement are actually just boring. Get a blood red throw rug, you assholes! And throw it on top of your carefully selected, ever so slightly off-white table with the glass top, you sad bitch!

r112 the present day inhabitants of that region are not direct descendants of Etruscans.

They're mostly Lombards, aren't they, r116? Originally Germans?

R39- They also cast Northern Europeans to depict Jesus Christ who was swarthy Middle Easterner not an Aryan from Darien.

R97- Correction the Ancient Olympics were only open to

NAKED Greeks

Not all Italians are swarthy, many are fair.

The men were shown with darker skin mainly due to working outside, traveling and military training which made them tan. While women were more depicted as fairer-skinned from being indoors. I don't think Italians and Greeks are actually really not that dark compared to Iberians like Portuguese. Sicilians and Cypriots have a lot of Near Eastern DNA.

DNA testing has shown that Near East/African DNA is very minimal in the Sicilian population. Sounds crazy, but DNA doesn't lie.

R122 I believe it. I think phenotype doesn't always fit the stereotypes. People would just have a darker tone because of the temperature and environment or just sexual selection not racial mixing. There are light-skinned Africans with no European mixture too. Also being ruled by a certain group doesn't mean that that group exterminated the original population or raped everyone. A lot of times those ruling class just lived separately and collected their taxes.

R117, Tuscany and Lombardy have been populated by so many different people throughout history it's hard to determine one particular people --- very different to, say, Corsica and Sardinia where a bunch of people live that have been found to be related to Mr Ötzi.

Corsicans have a lot of French blood.

Sicilians aren't that genetically different from mainland Italians, but they have more Viking blood because Sicily was a Viking stronghold for quite some time.

Continental Europeans, particularly Western Europeans, are a big mishmosh of different peoples' DNA because there were so many invasions/migrations for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Europeans look very alike in general. People nitpick outliers to argue there's some European subraces but in general the continent is tiny, travel was relatively easy with not too many geographic barriers and all those kingdoms and tribes and invaded and conquered all the time. Africans and Asians have a lot more variation in phenotypes. Asia especially since it extends from the Middle East to India to Japan to the Philippines.

Surprise! Blond Jesus was common in Byzantium and Constantinople. In the 12th century it was exported with the Crusaders to the west, France and Sicily. Byzantium imported blond Crusader princesses, like Maria of Antioch - and blond Hungarian brides. Also, Byzantine clothing - from the poor to the rich - was extremely colorful and highly decorated. People spent a lot of time on dress. Even in the 12th century charioteers and actresses still set popular fashions. Gambling on races and athletic events involved huge sums of money. There were even gambling machines to help you select winners. All this ended in 1204 after the Fourth Crusade. The last chariot races were held around 1200. There were dozens of race tracks and theaters - Constantinople had around 700,000 souls at the time.

I don't buy this theory. Gaudy paint on statues and monuments from the people who invented good taste? No fucking way. Truth is often these artifacts are dug up from the same ground from which so many pigments are found. Iron oxide reds, etc, clays and soil from which umbers and ochres, sienna, and many other pigments are derived. Don't fall for this bullshit somebody came up with. I'm surprised this dumb idea about painting statues hasn't been trashed yet.

Now the Met wants us to believe that ancient Greece and Rome looked like Six Flags. Who are the eternal grad students who come up with this stuff?

Greeks represent it the same way. I’ve been to the Athens Museum. They show quite a few pieces with flaked pigmentation or photo recreations of how it originally looked. I was shocked.

Byzantine history is the most neglected in world history, I think, r129. I think it's starting to be a thing now, but for many centuries it was just considered this weird offshoot between ancient Rome and the Ottoman empire that everyone could ignore. It is this big gap in world history that is only starting to be filled in now. And of course Byzantine is an invented world that nobody used at the time. They were the Roman Empire for many centuries.

Shut your whore mouth, r118. Jesus was beautiful and did not look like some filthy , coarse sabra Israeli.

How dare you!

The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) is indeed a fascinating period of history. It lasted for 1000 years longer than the Western Roman Empire.

Persians vs. Arabs

Neither are white

And it pretty much invented Christianity, r135, in all those councils that were always held in that part of the world. Probably another reason that people didn't want to talk about it much. Surely the Popes and later Martin Luther defined Christianity? Not those weird Greeks.

Just saying hi!

Antique Roadshow: With all that color in sorry to say but that's just 30 pounds of bric-a-brac. Almost knick, but not quite knack. Almost tchotkes.

But it's an authentic statue of Antinous, the pubes were really yellow, r139!

R118, many different cultures cast Jesus to look like themselves. It's not solely a white thing. It's a human nature thing.

R141 Bingo! Whenever anyone asks me why would God have come then and not now, that is part of the reason to me. That time period had enough education and achievement that he would be remembered and his story told, but it was also a time where there aren't many depictions of contemporary people unless they are rulers or wealthy. Therefore it allows anyone that hears the story of Jesus to cast themselves or those like them in the role making it more universal.

I am a Christian and it doesn't bother me to see a blond blue eyed Jesus nor a black one, even though I know neither are probably correct. But, I bet he was one handsome Jew.

Look at Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians and Separdi and Mizrahi Jews. That's closest to what Jesus looked like. Olive skin and usually dark curly hair and dark eyes. The Roman catacombs, Syrian and Persian Christian paintings and early Byzantine art portray biblical figures that way. The reason Jews and Muslims don't allow paintings and sculpture was due to fear of idolatry but they're no controversy among them what say Moses or Muhammad looked like Jesus.

Africa begins in Rome, cara.

I don't think so, hun @ R144. Oh and btw:

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I personally don't mind that Jesus looked like Jeffrey Hunter and was cut. My worst nightmare is that he was from Sweden and was uncut.

North Africans are light-skinned and look European, majority of Egyptians are olive-skinned Semitic people related to Arabs and Levantines. Subsaharans like Ethiopians and Nubians who are black were known and active in trade but never a heavy presence in Rome or Greece. They were more active in the Arab peninsula, Levant and Persia. Medieval and Renaissance Europe had West African merchants and nobles who had a minor but significant presence in trading centers as documented by medieval and Renaissance art. Some of the Moors were West African converts to Islam.

I've always wondered what the Classical civilizations of Egypt, Persia, Byzantium etc. would've evolved into if shit Islam didn't come around to fuck it all up.

Lebanese men are hot AF.

R148 Islam is 500 years younger than Christianity. It took until the 1600s for Christianity to loosen it grip thanks to Europe rediscovering Greco-Roman ideals and progressing forward and after WW2, Christianity became irrelevant except in The US and parts Africa where Evangelicals rule. Christian apologists love to lie and Christianity created modern civilization. Christianity is anti-intellectual and fear-driven. Christians were killing millions in the name of religion. Christians destroyed a lot of pagan art and architecture and withheld a lot of knowledge from the people. I would say both Christianity and Islam are bad but Islam still hasn't become irrelevant yet. But it's getting there.

Another gorgeous Lebanese man

[quote] North Africans are light-skinned and look European, majority of Egyptians are olive-skinned Semitic people related to Arabs and Levantines.

That is why I get upset at all the people who think Cleopatra was black. No, Egyptians then or now are not black plus she was part of an incestous Greek dynasty. Where are they getting the idea she was black? It isn't them wanting her to be black that upsets me, only that it makes no logical sense.

R152 I think people assume Africa = black. There actual black Egyptians and a dynasty were Nubians ruled. I think there were white Egyptians too and that last dynasty was Macedonian Greek which is what Cleo was. But the majority of Ancient Egypt was brown-skinned Semitic people who would be neither white nor black. I'm pretty sure Nefertiti and Akhenaten were partially Nubian descent. I find Cleopatra overexposed, way more interesting dynasties to explore.

I do wish people would focus more on Nubia, Axum (Ethiopia) and the many kingdoms of West and Central Africa because there's a lot of interesting and hidden history there. A rich history of trade, art, pottery, ironwork, music and other things. It's not as documented due to lack of written material but anthropologists have made great progress in discovering new things about Subsaharan Africa.

R153 Yeah I wanted to make clear that by:

[quote] No, Egyptians then or now are not black plus she was part of an incestous Greek dynasty.

There was supposed to be a period to make it clear that I didn't mean there were no black people in Egypt and that the no was answering the implied question of is Cleopatra black.

Nubia is an area I would love for Hollywood to explore more.

I think it's just zippy.

I think it's well-known by many that all races and cultures of worldwide people throughout history can feature physical variances across the spectrum, even among themselves. But what I find historically interesting are the dynamics that led to one or another of those spectrum differences to be the dominant ones over others in certain parts of the world as the races and cultures migrated--and how, why, when, and in what numbers as a time.

Otzi, an early Italian.

It is an interesting fact that Muslims cannot enslave other muslims. One of the number reasons the Turks took Constantinople was to satisfy the enslavers who followed them. When the city fell in 1453 the entire Christian population was either killed or sold into slavery - maybe up to 100,000 people. All of the old or infirm were killed - most of them in the atrium of Hagia Sophia.

That's why so many Africans converted to Islam and it's one of the biggest religions in upper West Africa. While Christians didn't care if Africans converted to Christianity and still kept them as slaves.

[quote] It is an interesting fact that Muslims cannot enslave other muslims.

It's not an interesting fact simply because it's not true. There was a lot of Muslim-Muslim slavery, and actually there still is, albeit in a less obvious version. Sunnites are particularly prone to enslave Muslim minorities since other Muslim confessions are being regarded as unworthy and enslaving its believers therefore is not off-limits.

[quote] When the city fell in 1453 the entire Christian population was either killed or sold into slavery

No. In fact Ottoman bureaucracy was full of Christians, there were even Christian wezirs. Converting to Islam, however, often offered career opportunities and social climbing. But if Christians wanted to remain Christians, they were usually able to, the only thing they had to do was to pay a so-called head tax. Believers of so-called book religions were comparatively safe in the Ottoman empire, particulary when they were of use to the Sultan, the military, etc.

But keep telling lies --- is that nonsense what one learns at Trump University?

The Christian Orthodox city of Constantinople was now under Ottoman control. When Mehmed II finally entered Constantinople through the Gate of Charisius (today known as Edirnekapı or Adrianople Gate), he immediately rode his horse to the Hagia Sophia, where after the doors were axed down, the thousands of citizens hiding within the sanctuary were raped and enslaved, often with slavers fighting each other to the death over particularly beautiful and valuable slave girls.[82] Moreover, symbols of Christianity were everywhere vandalized or destroyed, including the crucifix of Hagia Sophia which was paraded through the sultan's camps.[83] Afterwards he ordered his soldiers to stop hacking at the city's valuable marbles and 'be satisfied with the booty and captives; as for all the buildings, they belonged to him'.[84] He ordered that an imam meet him there in order to chant the adhan thus transforming the Orthodox cathedral into a Muslim mosque,[84][85] solidifying Islamic rule in Constantinople.[86]

The Ottomans did not want their Christians to convert, since they then could not be sold as slaves. During the sieges of Constantinople slave traders were organized by the Sultan - they stood on the hills of the city looking in and planned their trade. At the same time the Sultans were looking into the city and made plans for what they would do with Hagia Sophia and other buildings after they took the city. I can document all of this if you want. 1453 is very well documented and what happened to the Christian population. There are a number of historians who have recorded these facts. Mehmet II found the city completely empty after a few days. He had to import people to repopulate the city many of them were Greek Christians.

If you are interested I have a huge website on Hagia Sophia and Constantinople.

Why are we even discussing Muslims and the Ottomans now? This thread is about an exhibition with Ancient Greek and Roman stuff, ffs.

You can also read about the ancient sculpture on view in Constantinople. Much of it survived and was melted down by the Crusaders after1204. I have an inventory of sorts. The huge statue of Justinian was still on view in front of Hagia Sophia until after the conquest. There were still a few huge columns with statues on top like the Column of Arcadius and the column of the Archangel Michael in front of Holy Apostles.

"Sunnites"

Oh, dear!

Sunnites is correct, as are Sunni and Sunnis.

So "Oh dear" yourself, R167.

FYI, R167:

[quote] Sunnite (plural Sunnites) Synonym of Sunni (“a follower of the Sunni branch of Islam”)

Oh dear yourself now.

The grammar queens should be beheaded

JESUS WAS NOT LEBANESE, YOU CRETINS!!!

He was ENGLISH!!

Jesus Christ was American!!!

You have indeed schooled me, bitches at R168 and R169.