#polychromy

Kapala, Tibet (19th century),

Polychromy on bone,

I hand-painted this statue of Aphrodite to express the way she appears to me.

Ancient Greek statues weren’t white like we see in museums today. They were painted in bold and vivid colours like red, blue, green, and gold. Skin, hair, clothes, and even armour were all painted.

Over the centuries, weather and cleaning stripped the layers of paint away. By the Renaissance, scholars mistakenly believed the white marble look was intentional. But research has found traces of paint and helped recreate what they really looked like. They were bright, bold, and full of life.

Modern scientific methods such as UV analysis and pigment residue testing have revealed the original colours. Projects like Gods in Color have reconstructed how these statues once appeared, challenging long-held misconceptions that influenced Western art and racialized ideas of “purity” in aesthetics.

i mean for purposes of that post i think it's fine, it's obviously not exactly what the deal is but i think it's a perfectly effective explanatory simplification of what you seem to know is a complicated and nuanced subject, for purposes of getting to the actual point of the post without getting sidetracked into irrelevant distractions. i wish more posters (myself included) were better at not getting lost in the weeds!

like obviously people dont fail to see purple pink and orange it's not like it's the black and white portion of the wizard of oz where theyre grayscale and only appear magically once named. but for purposes of "what categories of dye exist" then like yeah orange or pink isnt necessarily considered a Distinct color in terms of Easily Producible Natural Dyes, theyre gonna fall under the umbrellas of red or yellow which is really all the post was saying (and which is more or less true, again, perfectly fine for the point being argued).

Varied polychrome reconstructions of Statue of Thalia, Greek Muse of Comedy. 2nd BCE, Delos. Reconstructions by the Liebieghaus Polychromy Research Project.