Since the eighteenth century, scholars have known that the Greeks and Romans lived in technicolor. They wore brightly colored clothes; their buildings were painted brilliant colors. Above all, the sculpture of Greece and Rome was painted. Only a few pieces, however, have survived with their paint intact. If we are to reconstruct the ancient world accurately and responsibly, then we must develop ways to reproduce the appearance of that world, including the sculpture, in living color. For the first time, we have the technology to do just that and to make such a reconstruction available to a larger public through the Web. Since we can scan and manipulate images, it is now possible to re-paint statues. We do not need plaster casts of the pieces, such as the Peplos Kore which Cambridge University has painted. Instead, we can use electronic resources to make visible the colorful world of antiquity. While there are various sites on the Internet with virtual Greeces and Romes, noone to date has applied this technology to reproducing the sculpture fully painted.

In this project I will work with Judith de Luce to study the problem of what this sculpture looked like, then to "paint" selected pieces of sculpture, and finally to create a Web site of these painted works, fully documented.

Project stages:

Review, evaluate, and test the software available to "paint" and animate images, starting with PhotoShop5.

• Review the scholarship on the production of Greek and Roman sculpture in marble, terra-cotta, and bronze, including the most recent work on painting. This will include studying the remains of original paint on such figures as the Kore with the "red boots" and the Peplos kore.

• Develop criteria for selection and then select five pieces of Greek and Roman sculpture for the project. Document each piece completely.
  Study the social, political, aesthetic, and physical contexts for the selected sculpture. This will include a close study of the installation site itself.

• Create a gallery of the five pieces in their actual physical context. Prepare supporting documentation including evaluations of the software available, an annotated bibliography on ancient sculpture, and an annotated bibliography on the development and use of technology in instruction.

Judith de Luce of the Department of Classics and a member of the core faculty of the NEH-sponsored VRoma Project, is beginning a project this summer to prepare a virtual gallery of representative pieces of Greek and Roman sculpture. (She has written a CELT proposal seeking funding to help support her project.) This gallery will initially be used in Art 382 (Greek and Roman Sculpture) which she will be teaching in the fall, but it is also part of a larger study of the production of sculpture in Greece and Rome. De Luce is already experienced working with the Web in terms of classroom instruction and has been studying the development and use of such resources in class.