Were marble statues painted in Ancient Rome？

Today we're going to dive into the Baths of Caracalla and thanks to this fantastic reconstruction by Yourscape, yourscape.com, we're going to be able to understand the color that once covered the statuary of ancient Rome. It's an opportunity to get back into the reality of the decoration of imperial Rome compared to what we see today in museum collections. Let's explore the Baths of Caracalla. Exploring the Baths of Caracalla, a real engineering explosion of building and planning in five years. It truly is a wonder of Rome. So many imperial bath complexes are located throughout the city built over hundreds of years. This one is the best preserved and it gives us a sense of how quickly they build it, how long lasting of an impression it makes in the city of Rome. Baths of Caracalla, about 30 acres in size, like the size of a small average Roman town. Well preserved because it's never built upon, although ransacked for building materials such as the Farnese collection now down in the Museum of Naples. This is a great example of the building achievements of the Romans always trying to supersede their predecessors. Caracalla's caldarium had a solid bronze gilded cupola about two-thirds the size of the Pantheon. Bath complexes were in the city of Rome the terme, virtual cities. You could eat, you could be entertained, you could watch sporting events, you could participate and it was something for everybody. Every social class was here from the emperor to the slave and of course underneath this entirely man-made built terrace it was honeycombed with countless corridors for slaves to move materials including wood keeping the caldarium space here warm as well as all the heated solarium spaces. Here we're not inserted into the fabric of the city, we're apart, we're and we have virtually the entire complex untouched. The marble's ripped out, the columns are gone, the statuary is now in other collections but we have this impressive skeletal framework of the entire baths and we can experience it today from the changing rooms to the palestra to the frigidarium, tepidarium and mighty caldarium spaces. You can join us in Italy for a number of courses. In March, Vesuvian Cities. In May, Building a Roman City and an architectural course with North Carolina State University and again in November another Vesuvian Cities course. So look to join us in Italy in 2024, look to new great content, free seminars and master classes on Ancient Rome Live. Back to the Basso Caracalla, it's worth remembering that there was once a whole neighborhood of houses of the Hadrianic era that get buried over in the construction of the Basso Caracalla. Incredible fresco remains on display in the Basso Caracalla but from domus structures, domiciles that existed in a neighborhood Hadrianic in date before the baths and what a great example of recuperation now on display so you get a better sense of the wall painting decorations that were being produced beautifully in the time of Hadrian you can appreciate that lost neighborhood destroyed by the construction of the mighty Basso Caracalla. When we take a look at the magnificent reconstruction of the portions of the Basso Caracalla, we see vibrant colors but where does this pavement come from? What about the marble veneer? We can take a look at the remains itself in the Basso Caracalla. Here a mosaic pavement of one of the palestras and we see the holes in the walls for the telltale sign of the marble veneer that was everywhere. Let's take a look in particular at this apse and we can see where the brickwork is still preserved. We have globbed on the portions of concrete to which the marble was affixed as well as the bullet holes for the iron clamps, the bronze clamps to which the marble panels were once attached. We'll take a look at the We can ask the question, where did most of it go? To answer that question we need to understand what pigments of ancient paint actually consisted of that ultimately disappeared through exposure to air and by being buried under rubble for centuries. White came from calcium carbonate, yellow came from various ochres, red came from calcification of yellow ochre or cinnabar which was made by grinding mercuric sulfide. Green came from minerals that contained glauconite or selenite or by grinding up malachite which made it much more expensive. Blue, known as frit or Egyptian blue, consisted of sand, potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate and copper, all heated up into a small ball that was then ground into fine powder. Or blue could be derived from more expensive materials such as lapis lazuli. Black came from carbon from plant material by burning pine resin, bark or vines. It also came from ivory and bone. Some of the most amazing statues were found by the Farneses in the 16th century and they removed them to their private collections, many of which are in the Naples Museum today. We have here a reconstruction and painting on those original statues in the frigidarium section. In particular, let's take a look at this colossal weary Hercules, the original form attributed to the great sculptor Lysippos, but this is by Glycon, the Athenian, so says the inscription at the base. This is an appropriate figure for the palestra area for the baths of an imperial complex at a grand scale of course to fit within the large space of the frigidarium. Also in the frigidarium section, we have a series of massive granite tubs which the Farnese family placed in their piazza in front of their renaissance palace. Let's travel now to the palestra areas, the places for working out, lifting weights and wrestling. Each palestra had its own colossal scale statue group. This is the famous scylla group. You have this creature, the monster scylla that's attacking the ship of Odysseus, and the body, we're told, has tentacles with wolf-like heads. This statue group is poorly preserved in the Bowser Caracalla, but the reconstruction of it here is based upon the statue group that was found in the Villa of Tiberius in Sperlonga. So we have an opportunity to relive that horror which once would have decorated the palestra with that vibrant violent group of scylla. Let's travel to the other palestra where we have the famous Farnese bull as is known today. It shows Zetos and Amphion and these are the sons of Antiope. They are tying Dursi to the horns of a raging bull in revenge for the cruelty exacted by their stepmother. Now reportedly in antiquity this was carved out of a single block by two famous sculptors Apollonius and Tariscus commissioned on the island of Rhodes then brought to Rome and fitted as a fountain with water gurgling at the bottom. Ends up ultimately in the Bowser Caracalla. So we have here a virtuoso statuary group at an antiquity they thought was carved for one block. Of course it's not, but it stands again as a horrific violent scene that is then paired with the violence of scylla and the other palestra. Once again a shout out to Yourscape. Go check out this amazing app. I'd like to give my regards to Professor Bernie Fisher and his team for making something truly extraordinary a great didactic model for you to learn more about ancient Rome.