He Never Fails to Amaze

Portrait of Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess of d'Abernon by John Singer Sargent, 1904, The Birmingham Museum of Art, AL

Another beautiful portrait by Sargent.

Look Familiar?

The Unswept Floor, Roman Mosaic, 2nd century CE

A Roman mosaic based on an earlier painting. It depicts the remnants of a dinner party scattered all over the floor of a dining room. Do you see the mouse?

Painted Gentleman

Augustus of Primaporta, Early 1st century CE, reconstructed copy of marble, that is a copy of bronze, with paint.

Sometimes as we look at the art left behind by ancient civilizations we expect that they intended their sculpture to be viewed as the bleached white examples we see today however, that is not the case. The sculpture of the Greeks and the Romans was painted. We know this because remnants of the color survive and in rarer cases, sculpture with the paint still applied survives.