Chromatic versus Polychrome Sculpture

Abstract

quently filled in with colors: brown, red ochre and black oxide of manganese [1]. In the bronze age of early Mesopotamia, the sculptor satisfied his appetite for color by inlaying his bronze statues with shells and lapis lazuli. From the Amarnian period in Egypt, some sensitively carved heads in wood have come down to us that were painted to imitate the color of the skin with a contrasting color for the hair. Minoan, Mycaenean and archaic Greek sculpture were also generally ornamented with color [2]. The great sculptors of the classical period in Greece, in love with the natural colors and texture of marble, were reluctant to bow to the prevailing fashion of that time (which was to superimpose colors on sculpture) but sometimes did compromise by allowing some delicate flesh tones to be sparingly applied [3]. Furthermore, the sculptors of the Renaissance, from Donatello to Michelangelo, and right into the twentieth century such sculptors as, for example, Auguste Rodin, were unequivocally opposed to the addition of paint to their sculptures. They looked upon such practice as a vulgarism that did violence to their work. In the Baroque and Rococco periods, the practice of polychromy (the painting of sculpture) reached its highest development. Especially those sculptures, destined to be placed in richly ornamented churches, were colored, ostensibly to harmonize with their surroundings. The demand for lavish ornamentation created a cadre of specialists whose work consisted exclusively in painting these sculptures. The entire wooden statue was covered with linens, then covered with a layer of gesso that was then painted in colors and overlaid with gold leaf. Polychromy was also resorted to by sculptors in recent times and is still practiced today, whether in figurative or non-figurative sculpture. Where the work is carried out in wood it is then painted over with some color or gold leaf to hide the imperfections of the underlying material or to augment its attractiveness.