Didn’t know this ~ 1974 photograph shows a group of freshly-excavated 2,000 year-old Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an, China, with their original vibrant colours. Once exposed to air and sunlight during excavation, the colours started to disappear almost immediately https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/true-colors-terracotta-soldiers/
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Great post, thank you✨
It's too bad that we haven't discovered an ancient (Greco-Roman) site that has preserved the paint/pigments applied to mediterranean marble statuary--the fragments that we do have on record (buried deep in the recesses of these carvings/artifacts) are equally intense:)
Elgin be damned!