sufficientlylargen:

petermorwood:

thatlittleegyptologist:

sophiamcdougall:

lostinhistory:

thatlittleegyptologist:

The Roman Horus statue is pretty cursed without the paint reconstruction tbf

The reconstruction just enhances the weird:

Also this Roman bronze of Horus:

Finally, while looking for these images I found this Australian newspaper article that uses these images and has this headline:

Yeah, that sums up Roman Egypt

Painted Horus looks so done

I always wonder … why are painted reconstructions of classical statues of so, well, bad? Were the incredibly skilled sculptors of antiquity truly stuck working with these utterly hopeless painters? Were they really incapable of varying and layering colour to reflect the different textures of hair, skin, fabric, armour etc? Did they genuinely just slap on a base coat of paint, no highlights or shadows at all, and call it a day?

Nowonderpepole look at that and think “…OK, can we go back to the white marble? That was classier.”

Or is it that the people doing the reconstructions aren’t artists? Because it’s not as though painted statues can’tlook better. Because statue-painting exists as a current art form. It’s just that the statues are tiny:

Kirill Kanaev

Alfonso Giraldes

Michael Zajkov

And look at what Olga Kamenetskaya does with mass produced dolls!

I’d love to see what a really good miniature figure or doll painter could do with an ancient Greek, Egyptian or Roman statue. Although I’m sure Horus would still look appropriately unnerving.

It’s because they’re only working with the colour that was detected in that area on the statue and these statues represent the results of colour analysis. They’re not designed to be true reconstructions, just ones that give you an idea of the colours were used. We know the Greeks/Romans/Egyptians were good at paintwork since we have delicate frescos from Pompeii and the artwork in Egyptian tombs that show us they could. Since we can only detect a base colour in most instances, it would be a misrepresentation of the archaeological results of paint analysis to paint them “properly”. I’m sure these statues could be displayed with a full reconstruction of paint, done properly, but for now we just use these statues to show the results of paint analysis so they look pretty bad.

Many of the frescoes and mosaics mentioned by @thatlittleegyptologist show such a masterful grasp of shading and modelling that this kindergarten level of reconstructed statue painting seems (to me, anyway) another misrepresentation.

How about this:

Three half- or quarter-scale reproduction Famous Classical Statues (3D printed, maybe?) with the first all-white as people expect FCSs to look, the second coloured in flat, unshaded paint-by-numbers style and explanation that this is dictated by the restrictions of archeological colour analysis, the third painted - also tinned / gilded where required, such as on armour - with proper shading and explanation that this is based on period artistic ability shown in frescoes, mosaics etc. with pictorial examples to prove it.

I bet there’d be members of model figure / soldier societies who’d be happy to help turn this…

…into this or a period-correct facsimile of same.

In museums (at least, the few I’ve seen) a gaudily-painted facsimile of a marble sculpture will generally be accompanied by a plaque explaining what’s going on - it only becomes a misrepresentation when people don’t read the plaque (or worse, publish pictures with captions like “Roman statues looked like this!”, which is a lie) and just assume that this is supposed to be what it looked like, instead of just a visualization of what information we have.

Several museums have started putting collections online, including (in some cases) 3D scans of sculptures, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there are already digital painters making more realistically painted versions of some of these.

boyvandals:

Ok also bc this website doesnt allow polls pls reblog if ur subbed to dracula daily and say in the tags if you’ve read dracula before, have only seen/heard film/tv/radio adaptations, or if u only know dracula through cultural osmosis im curious

robotsandfrippary:

i-amneveralone:

papi-chulo-seb:

As someone that has grown up surrounded by beaches and done surf life saving, I know how the sea works. Lots of people dont. Every summer multiple tourists die here because they don’t respect the sea, if you’re going to the coast, here’s a thing I saw on Facebook.

wow.

reblogging for all of us that grew up in land locked states, then visit the ocean and are used to just plunging into a lake.

liyazaki:

but i do feel a bit unsatisfied.|mr. unlucky, ep. 8

bonus:gotcha-a wild kota was caught!

phantomofthehoepera:

absolutely hate this fandom trend of looking at your media of choice’s token female character and being like “ah yes. she is The Holder Of The Braincell. the most reasonable of the group, if not the ONLY reasonable one. she is in control of her emotions, only looking upon the boys’ foolish antics with mild, bemused exasperation for she knows that boys will be boys. she will not participate since she is, after all, the Most Rational of the group, looking over the lads like a nanny, or perhaps even a mother”. like. yawn. I for one would like to see some funny women instead