Scent of a Roman

Question: Classical scholarship recently revealed that Greco-Roman marble statues featured what surprising embellishment?

Answer: Fragrant perfumes.

Apparently, Greek and Roman statues in the ancient world weren’t just beautiful to look at—they smelled nice, too.

We’re pretty sure you’ve noticed how statues from ancient Greece and Rome displayed in museums are colorless—all you ever see is pure white marble. Yet classical scholarship has known for quite some time that Greco-Roman statues were in fact quite colorful. Traces of pigments from the long-faded paint that once covered these works have revealed they weren’t subtle colors, either. Many were painted in bright, vivid colors—sometimes flamboyantly so.

But as far as embellishments to these ancient works of art is concerned, the use of bright colors was just the tip of the … let’s say, Roman nose. The latest research suggests that Greco-Roman sculptures were actually perfumed with a variety of sweet-smelling fragrances, including rose and beeswax. For a modern-day equivalent, breathing in the heavily perfumed air at a temple lined with sculptured gods and goddesses may have been like visiting a Sephora during their holiday sale.

Why the paint; why the perfume?

The reason the ancient Greeks and Romans created cult statues in the first place was to create the illusion that the gods and goddesses they depicted were alive. Plain white marble wasn’t going to fool anyone—but adding things like brightly-hued paints, jewelry, garlands, fabrics, and other embellishments gave visitors the impression that the divinity was present in the temple. And now that we know many of them were anointed with perfumes as well, that certainly would have added to the illusion. It’s also quite clever. When temple visitors viewed the statues, it wasn’t just a visual experience but an olfactory one as well.

So, if we know all this, why do we only see pure white marble Greco-Roman busts and sculptures in museums? There are lots of reasons for this—and some of them will take you down a rabbit hole—but the main one is quite simple: The colors are a relatively recent discovery. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that Italians and others began excavating ancient artworks and statuary, and by that time almost all their colors had faded away. After cleaning, and exposure to air and sunlight, any lingering traces were erased entirely. For centuries, European scholars assumed this was the way Greek and Roman sculptors meant to have their works shown—bare and unadorned. Not only that—the absence of color was viewed as a sign that the early Greeks and Romans exhibited great creative restraint. They were praised for having no need for the use of gaudy colors found in artworks of Egypt and other ancient world civilizations (unlike Europe’s damp climate, Egypt’s dry climate helped to preserve the colors).

Once it became established that these (seemingly) unpainted marbles were looked upon as the height of perfection, it’s easy to see why Renaissance sculptures from artists like Michelangelo were similarly unadorned. And from the Renaissance on, artists created sculptures in an homage to what they thought Greek and Roman art looked like—which we now know didn’t.

Whitewashing of history?

Now comes the weird part. With the mistaken "whiteness" (really, the absence of color) of Greek and Roman sculptures now equated with sublime beauty, European scholars could now argue for the superiority of Greco-Roman art over gaudy (colorful) "foreign" works of art. This all fit nicely during Europe’s era of colonial expansion as it backed up many views of the supremacy of Western civilization—and even helped to justify Europe’s imperial aspirations.

The erroneous belief that Greco-Roman sculptures were purposely white became self-reinforcing as well. When rare examples of statues with some of the colors left intact were discovered, experts would argue that they must have been made by pre-Roman Etruscans or some other (inferior) culture. Antiquity dealers would actually scrub statues with any hints of color pigments on them to make them more valuable on the market.

So that’s the main reason why any time you visit a museum, displays of statues from ancient Greece and Rome have one thing in common—they’re all pure white marble. But there are glimmers of hope that things may be changing …

In Living Color

In 2003, a global traveling exhibition called Gods in Colour, the creation of art scholars at a sculpture museum from Frankfurt, Germany, began touring cities around the world. In what must have been like watching The Wizard of Oz as it goes from black and white to vivid technicolor, visitors were finally able view recreations of ancient Greek and Roman marble sculptures as they existed in their time—lavishly painted with gold, purple, blue, yellow, and red pigments, as well as in a range of skin tones. While it shocked the art world—as it rendered even the most well-known works almost unrecognizable—the exhibit had a successful 12-year-run and is credited with paving the way for similar shows like the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2022 Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color exhibition.

Why the whiteness myth endures

With passions running so deep on the "whiteness" of Greco-Roman sculpture, evidence to the contrary didn’t stand a chance. It wasn’t too long ago that scholars who continued to discuss polychromy (the painting of objects in a variety of colors) in Greek and Roman marbles were taken to task or outright dismissed. In Germany, Goethe insisted that "savage nations, uneducated people, and children have a great predilection for vivid colors." Auguste Rodin is said to have pounded his chest while exclaiming, "I feel it here that they were never colored." Sheesh, calm down guys

In his 2000 book, Chromophobia, artist and art critic David Bathelor argues that at a certain point ignorance becomes willful denial—and we simply refuse to see what is before our eyes. Unfortunately, even with our increased awareness of the vibrant colors—and even perfumes—that informed Greco-Roman sculptures, the myth of whiteness remains so ingrained in the cultural imagination that even if it changes, it will never be forgotten.

More things you may not know about Greek and Roman sculptures:

• Make your own marble statues smell nice—Dioscurides, an ancient Greek pharmacologist, left a recipe on how to make rose perfume. First, you’ll have to get yourself a type of reed called Schoenus. After cooking it in some oil and straining it, add 1,000 dry rose petals. Next, cover your hands in honey and carefully press the entire mixture. After letting it rest overnight, transfer it into a vessel lined with honey. Now when your neighbors visit, they’ll say "Where am I, in Sephora?!"

• Is that very Old Spice you have on?—Men in ancient Greece would scent their bodies before visiting the symposium, a popular social gathering where they drank together, gossiped, and enjoyed an evening of poetry and music.

• Those Greeks have lost their marbles—While statues in the ancient world were crafted from both bronze and marble, most of the surviving statues are marble. That’s because bronze was very expensive in antiquity, and most of the bronze statues were melted down. Since marble couldn’t be recycled so easily, far more marble statues tended to survive. Fortunately, the Romans made marble copies of many of the original Greek bronzes.

• What’s the difference between Greek & Roman sculptures, anyway?—Not to oversimplify, but sculptural art of the ancient Greeks focused more on the authority of Greek gods and goddesses while Roman sculptures paid much more attention to honoring Roman emperors of the day.

• Now if any statue could use a little perfume—While doing construction work in the sewer system along the Via Appia in Rome last year, workers uncovered an ancient marble statue. Archaeologists believe the well-preserved male figure dating from the first to fifth century CE and dressed in a lion skin and carrying a club depicts Heracles from Greek mythology (who later became Hercules in Roman mythology).

• Scents and sensibility—There was another, more practical reason why many statues were scented with perfumes and oils. Certain oils were purposely applied to preserve the surface of the statues, preventing the marble from drying out or deteriorating over time. Resins and other substances were also applied to fix the scents and intensify the colors painted on the sculptures.

• Tell us what you really think—Although the recent color reconstructions of Greek and Roman sculptures have been very well-received, not everyone is pleased with the results— including a Stanford University art historian who described a repainted statue of the Roman Emperor Augustus as "a cross-dresser trying to hail a taxi."

Observe ancient Greek and Roman statues during our The Aegean Islands, Athens & Istanbul adventure.