mildred_of_midgard: (Default)

From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard


The best part of this is seeing you no longer looking like you got out of a POW camp.

But the Vegas pics are pretty hilarious too. Thing is, the Greeks and Romans were at least as tacky as Vegas. All those white marble statues? Would not have been white in the ancient world. They would have been painted bright colors and often gilded. The reason we think the ancients were so tastefully minimalist was that paint wears off after a couple thousand years, and gold gets stolen/repurposed. So only the white marble was left, and the post-ancient world built a whole aesthetic around it.

I think it was only toward the end of the eighteenth century that ancient art enthusiasts started to realize there were trace amounts of paint left on some of the statues. As our techniques at revealing these improved, so did our awareness of just how much paint there really had been originally. The Greeks and Romans did not like unpainted marble. We just thought they did. Oops.

Nashville got it right with their reproduction of the Athena Parthenos. This is EXACTLY what the original in 5th century BCE Athens looked like. And it looked like that for a reason, too: imperialist propaganda. Athens is bigger and better than you, so don't fuck with her.



(This, like the original, is 40 feet tall and quite impressive in person.)
mildred_of_midgard: (Default)

From: [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard


*nod*

This is because people are people. Would that statue not feel right at home where you are now?
umadoshi: (riceball love (snowgarden))

From: [personal profile] umadoshi


These posts are making me smile so hard. *^^*
chomiji: Nase Asumi with a wry smile on her face, and the caption Awesomesauce (Asumi - awesomesauce)

From: [personal profile] chomiji


Wow, such statuary! Very boobs!

Also you look happy and wonderful.

.

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