> Starting in the Renaissance, artists made sculpture and architecture that exalted form over color, in homage to what they thought Greek and Roman art had looked like. In the eighteenth century, Johann Winckelmann, the German scholar who is often called the father of art history, contended that “the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is,” and that “color contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty.” When the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were first excavated, in the mid-eighteenth century, Winckelmann saw some of their artifacts in Naples, and noticed color on them. But he found a way around that discomfiting observation, claiming that a statue of Artemis with red hair, red sandals, and a red quiver strap must have been not Greek but Etruscan—the product of an earlier civilization that was considered less sophisticated. He later concluded, however, that the Artemis probably was Greek. (It is now thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original.) Østergaard and Brinkmann believe that Winckelmann’s thinking was evolving, and that he might eventually have embraced polychromy, had he not died in 1768, at the age of fifty, after being stabbed by a fellow-traveller at an inn in Trieste
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-wh... cited by https://bsky.app/profile/ellipticalnight.bsky.social/post/3m...
Man, what a line. What a horror, this projection of opinion! From the "Father of Art History"! To rob the world so! I feel this way all the time, that anti-sentiment, that the pure marble world just stately and so is art and perfection, over the colors of the universe & it's possibility!
> "the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is"
This should make your blood run cold, imo. A world locked in amber view of reality, static, sedate. Whew.
For some additional context; many old pigments were not stable at all.
https://www.vangoghstudio.com/what-were-the-original-colors-...
Or do you need to infer it based on location, budget, time, climate etc?
As far as I'm aware there is no way to know for sure what colours originally looked like, especially if the information is limited. There are so many variables, we can only guess.
There has been some research on what causes degradation on paper/pigment but as far as I know much of it ends up as a mystery, a fact of time...
But seriously. I am not against ai slops in general, people explore what’s possible to make. But I don’t really appreciate them at Show HN - there should be a new thread for ai-made or -assisted projects, or there should be a disclosure in project description.
And the pigments fade. And even worse, they fade at various rates and some are almost completely gone.
Generally, a painting is best viewed and photographed in as close a lighting environment as it was painted. I have seen many paintings 'blasted' by unnaturally bright gallery lights. There is a reason why a gallery lighting designer is a real job. However, in my experience effective gallery lighting designers are as rare as rocking horse shit.
It is true that the paint the artists applied many years ago will often bear little resemblance to that which we now see. This is less true of earth browns and very true of paintings done at the beginning of the pigment revolution, when wonderful colors were produced which were later discovered to be very 'fugitive'. However, the relative relationship between these paints remains more or less intact, and IMHO this is the most important factor in aesthetic evaluation.
Another factor is how a photo flattens such differences as rough vs smooth (and their consequent light reflection properties). In a Titian painting, huge areas are untouched rough red oxide primer on rough canvas, vs the slight gloss of oil paint. Importantly, old masters would often apply their lights as (smooth) thick paint and their dark as thin glazes (or scumbles) above a thin primer (red or green or yellow ochre or whatever). The frisson between these layers gave the darks their depth that they would otherwise have lacked. This is mastery of dynamic range at its finest. Googles art project photos comes close to capturing this. For an example, check out any portrait by Durer in Google art project.