Colourful beauty of Parthenon marbles revealed in scientific analysis

Though the Parthenon marbles were admired for centuries for their stark white brilliance, it has long been known that the sculptures were originally brightly painted, before millennia of weathering, cannon bombardment, rough handling and overenthusiastic cleaning scoured them clean.

Evidence for the paintwork has been highly elusive, however, leading their former curator at the British Museum to confess that, after years of hunting in vain for traces of pigment, he had sometimes doubted they were painted at all.

A new examination of the sculptures held by the British Museum, using innovative scanning techniques, has revealed dramatic evidence of a “wealth of surviving paint”. What it suggests, according to the researchers, is that the painting of the marbles was “a more elaborate undertaking than was ever imagined” – potentially as intricate and subtle as their carving.