This fountain may be my most ambitious painting project yet. I don't consider it finished. Why is the statue painted? Because my friend Jeff informed me long ago that in ancient times, statues like this were painted quite brightly; we only see them as white today because the paint has long faded. At least, I think that's what Jeff told me; if that's untrue, the blame lies with my faulty memory.
Still needs shading for better definition, of course, but I'm getting slightly better at attaining full paint coverage without straying "outside the lines" too much. Except for those blue toes on the god's right foot...ah well.
2 comments:
In the classical era, painted statues were popular but so were unpainted. Likely, an expensive marble statue would not get paint.
Neptune was a common statue theme for fountains, because, well, obviousness. I saw the Fontana del Nettuno in Florence, which is similar to yours. It was definitely never painted. There's lots of other Neptunes, though, I'm sure many of them would have been painted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Neptune,_Florence
I stumbled upon "polychrome", which I knew was a thing but did not know the word for it. Polychrome is the art of painting statues and architecture in various colours.
Check out the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychrome
Post a Comment