TLS on Greek Statues

This figure from the west pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aegina is generally identified as Paris, Prince of Troy, shown engaged in battle against the Greeks . The pediment, which dates from circa 480 BC, was unearthed in 1811 and became the subject of early archaeological investigation, and some imaginative remodelling. For the painted statue shown here, the Munich Stiftung fur Archaologie took the colours from traces of pigment noted in 1906 and investigated with ultraviolet photography in 1982; the patterns on the tunic and leggings were detected under raking light from faint incisions on the marble surface, which show evidence of decoration: diamonds, checks, lozenges, a rampant griffin. Garish Paris is on show alongside some beautiful original coloured sculptures - medieval, Renaissance and modern - in The Color of Life: Polychromy in sculpture from antiquity to the present, at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles until June 23.