I went on a field trip to Greece in School, where I saw a lot of ancient ruins of temples that had also been painted when "in use". While the landscape was just breathtaking (and the ancient Greeks had a knack for putting their temples in beautiful places), I was always a little sad to be shown the ruins without a clue what those places must have looked like back in their prime.
I know it is not easy, but I so wished to just once see the ruins of a temple next to a reconstruction of what archaeologists think it must have looked like back when.
Agreed :-)
But see the comment down thread about under painting - what we see here is fairly child like poster colours painting - all that can be justified from the scarce evidence. But it is hard to imaging the sophistacted sculptors leaving the painting to less subtle hands. So the reconstruction we could prove today is probably a laughable copy of the reality - after all they would have all the colours of the Greek landscape to inspire them!
>But it is hard to imagin[e] the sophistacted sculptors leaving the painting to less subtle hands. //
It is hard to imagine. But there could be other reasons to use garish and unnatural colours, perhaps the colours were akin to pythagorean forms - they could represent perfect colours, seen as more godly or regal.
You can see a similar sort of thing in some sectors of [UK] society today. People paint on makeup that makes them look orange-y or an unnatural flat/monotone brown and that is seen - in limited circles - as the epitome of beauty. Consider Geisha as another example, flat white with shocking red lips, how unnatural.
This brings to mind reflections I've read on how important it is to not assume that just because something seems obvious or the best method available in the period with the technology available that it should be the case. Occam's Razor be damned, humans often complicate things beyond their need and those complications aren't often unrefined in some way.
It is fun to imagine marbles as life-size, lifelike figures, lacquered to give a living shine and perhaps dressed in fine vestments and perfumed; the uncanny valley of yesteryear.
We can say two things for sure - we do not currently know enough to have evidence of how they were painted, that these statues cross vast amounts of time, technology and fashion - and that so both of us could easily be right ...
I know it is not easy, but I so wished to just once see the ruins of a temple next to a reconstruction of what archaeologists think it must have looked like back when.
So I think this is a really cool idea.