The bow is painted red and gold, and even the arrows are decorated red.

His quiver is decorated in a similar colour-palate, with a slightly different design, almost like scales. This archer is one of his most spectacular: an intricate design of blue, red, yellow and green diamonds interlock, to give the archer ornate leggings and sleeves. Brinkmann has spent years recreating the brightly-coloured decoration on copies of the statues which the Ancient Greeks would have seen all around them. On his arms and legs, we can see traces of a diamond pattern. The bronze eyelashes are particularly delightful, if a little disconcerting.įurther along, bending into the lower part of the slanted roof, was the figure of an archer (perhaps Paris, son of Priam of Troy). There is a magnificent pair of Greek eyes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, made of bronze, marble, quartz and obsidian. The eye sockets of ancient statues are often empty, because the eyes were made separately, and they have been lost over time. Hair would have been painted dark and the flesh might well have been painted too. What we see as a uniform greenish-brown head would once have been gleaming bright, almost golden. There is a modern-day replica of the statue in Nashville, by the sculptor Alan LeQuire, which surely captures something of the glittering original.Įven bronze statues would have been much brighter than their dark brown appearance suggests today: bronze acquires a patina over time. He tells us the statue was chryselephantine: covered in gold and ivory. Although the statue is long since destroyed, we have a description of it in the writings of the ancient historian, Pausanias. Phidias – the most celebrated sculptor of his day – also created a huge statue of Athena Parthenos to stand inside the Parthenon (it takes its name from the description of the goddess: parthenos means ‘maiden’). Yet ancient art would have been a riot of colour and glitzy decoration.

Tadema artist