The usual lekythos was a small terracotta vessel used to hold oil for funerary rituals but the shape was monumentalized and translated into marble for use as a grave marker.
Marble with polychromy.
The phrasikleia kore is a parian marble statue that features prominent polychromy as seen in the hair and the dress.
1 polychromy in greek and roman sculpture is not limited to the application of pigments by painting on marble but includes a variety of other.
This practice is also seen during the same period used on the sarcophagi of egyptian mummies.
Only a fragment of this marble lekythos survives.
Polychromy means the art of painting in several colors especially as applied to ancient pottery sculpture and architecture.
Originally it had a cylindrical body.
Most of them had lost their original paint after centuries of exposure to the elements.
What is sculptural polychromy.
The term polychrome from greek poly many and chroma colour was first used by antoine chrysostôme quatremère de quincy in 1814 to denote the presence of colour on classical sculpture.
When roman marble sculpture was rediscovered in the renaissance it emerged from more than a millennium of burial essentially devoid of its ancient polychromy the monochromatic appearance of these works gave rise to new modern canons of sculpture characterized by an emphasis on form with little consideration of color.
It is thought that the skin of the phrasikleia kore was covered with a type of gum arabic to give it a realistic appearance.
Statuette of venus venus de clercq.
In the late 400s and early 300s b c greek grave monuments sometimes took the form of a large lekythos.
97 2 33 20 3 cm 38 1 4 13 8 in.
Skeptics of polychromy question why greek and roman artists would have sculpted with such beautiful materials parian marble which was commonly used has a prized translucence and then painted.
The myth of the white marble started during the renaissance when we first began unearthing ancient statues.