Marble sculpture was painted to look more lifelike, but I have seen a few reproductions of bronzes with bare polished metal for skin and dark staining or paint for hair. These sculptures often had inlaid copper lips and nipples, glass eyes, and silver fingernails suggesting more of the material was not painted. Is there any further information on how representations of textile were treated? Would they have been painted like marble counterparts, or the metal treated differently for contrast?
The main source of information I have (as someone who does not deal with objects directly) comes from written accounts by contemporary Greaco-Roman writers describing bronze statues. Pausanias, a Greek writer, writing in the 2nd century CE, in briefly looking over his work again, does not really describe the state, condition or appearance of bronze statues in his writing. He often simply just describes them as a 'bronze statue' and is more concerned with what the statue depicts.^(1)
Going back to the 3rd century BCE, a decree erected on the Greek island of Delos describes the work of a sculptor named Telesinos who is said to have restored bronze statues for the sanctuary of Asklepios. The decree also states that the bronze statue that he gifted to the community is to be kept 'shining bright'. We can assume from this that bronze statues require regular maintenance and some kind of treatment in order to ensure they did not deteriorate over time.^(2)
As for what this treatment was, we can turn to Pliny's Natural History. Pliny says that the 'ancients' finished their bronze statues with bitumen and at a later date began to start covering them with gold. This provides us with potential options for how a statue would have looked in antiquity, either finished with bitumen, (as perhaps the bronzes of Telesinos were owing to how they were to be kept 'shining bright') or covered in gold.^(3)
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