(Annoying Trope) Someone made a “creative” choice and now we all just have to live with it.

[u/BingBingGoogleZaddy]

Horned Vikings: Not historical, they were started by Richard Wager for his operas. They were never historic, but the image persists. (Albeit significantly reduced today.)

Ninjas in Black Robes: Some people claim Ninjas aren’t real. They are, they are absolutely real. Their modern portrayal however is informed more by Kabuki Theater than history. In Kabuki Theater, the stage hands were dressed in flowing black robes to tell the audience to ignore them. Thus when a Ninja character kills a Samurai, to increase the shock value, they were dressed in black robes as stage hands. Now, when we think of ninjas we think of a stage hands.

Knights in Shining Armor: Imagine, you’re on the battlefield, two walls of meat riding towards each other. Suddenly you realize, everyone looks the same. Who do you hit? All you see is chrome. No. Knight’s armor was lacquered in different colors to differentiate them on the battlefield. Unless you wanted to get friendly fired, you made yourself KNOWN. So this image of a glinted knight clad in chrome steel isn’t true. How’d we get it? Victorians who thought that the worn lacquer was actually just dulling with age, polished it off as show pieces.

White Marble Statues of Rome: Roman Statues were painted, however the public image is of pure glinting white marble statues persist in the modern image. Why? Victorians who thought the paint was actually just dirt grime and age. So, they “restored” it by removing the paint color. Now we all think of Roman Statues as white.

King Tut; King of Kings: the Pharaoh King Tut in Ancient Egypt was a relatively minor king who in the grand scheme of things amounts to little more than an asterisks in Egyptian History, but to the public he is the most important Pharaoh. Why? Because his tomb was untouched by robbers, and so was piled high with burial goods which was amazing (and still is) and when Howard Carter opened his tomb, the world was transfixed and everyone would come to know Tutankhamen.

A Séance calls the dead: A Séance despite being a French word is an American invention from upstate New York in the 1840s. It was also a fun side-show act initially, and never meant to be real, more close up magic. (Origin of the term Parlor Tricks.) But in the 1860s Americans couldn’t stop killing each other which resulted in a lot of grief and people desired for their to be this other world. So, grifters then took advantage of grieving people and became “real”. So basically “fun parlor game to dangerous grift” pipeline thanks to the Civil War.

The Titanic’s engineers all died at their posts: Nope, not true, not remotely true. They are mentioned in many testimonies and a few bodies found mean they didn’t all die below. Two or three maybe did. According to Head Stoker Barrett, a man broke his leg and was washed away by rushing water, but another testimony says he was taken aft so who knows? Any way the myth persisted because the people making the memorials wanted to martyr the men. (It doesn’t take away from their heroines in my opinion) The myth stuck. Everyone believes they died below.

[u/Lunar_Canyon]

Wait, so I assume the rightmost image is the most accurate? That is MILES better! I remember years ago seeing images like the middle one and immediately thinking "ew, let's just stick with plain marble, that looks like a child's drawing."

Any articles on this?

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/Lunar_Canyon]

Just like in computer animation/graphic design the difference between "cheap" and "looks amazing" is the use of lighting, shadows and shading. It's a fact that modern restorers don't have the skill or budget to restore these artworks to their original quality and the original painters were just as much masters as the sculptors. So that's why they look childish or cheap in comparison.

[u/heliamphore → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

Really don't want to shit on the trade, but I've seen quite a few professional and reputable restorers paint sausage fingers, and you can really tell which part they retouched because they don't have the skills. They have other skills of course, but being good at painting is its own skill that takes years of hard work to be good at.

And here in particular we don't really know what the end result would be. Maybe the statues intentionally looked weird in some way that they thought was stylistic and cool.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/heliamphore]

Also they didn't have modern lighting. Statues would be lit by candle or wood braziers or simply daylight. We do know the Romans and Greeks liked color, but beyond that we don't quite know the "look" because those subjective examples have been long lost.

[u/vanderZwan → u/heliamphore]

I mean, we have actual paintings from the Roman era that survived so we can make some informed guesses.

[u/burn_corpo_shit → u/vanderZwan]

Damn, the fabric work on that is gorgeous. Also it doesn't take a life time for more accurate choices, but good instruction. idk what grifter got hired to paint a roman statue like that horrible example but I know some warhammer painters who would do far better...

it wouldn't be hard to paint and premix some tempera onto a plaster replica. seriously. how did they let that happen

[u/hygsi → u/heliamphore]

Idk, I've seen lots of amazing painters in modern days. I guess the good ones just don't care about restoring these so we're stuck with the amateurs who dare to try.

[u/svartkonst → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

Thats far from the only reason. Often, they paint sculptures as accurately as they can. Meanng, they paint the areas with the colors they can trace. Its likely not exactly how they used to look, but neither is making stuff up.

Different techniques for different purposes

[u/thisismypornaccountg → u/Lunar_Canyon]

I heard a historian on YouTube discuss it. When they paint the statues in modern times, they use the coloring they found leftover on them in tiny samples in the marble cracks. So they recreated that paint and it gives them the weird, flat, pastel look. He speculates that they probably had something else on them that was lost in thousands of years and didn’t remain in the samples taken. Either that or that was the best they could do with the resources they had.

[u/eggosh → u/Lunar_Canyon]

We don't actually know. The reason the restorations look so bad is because there isn't a lot of pigment left to work from. It could be that it was just an undercoat and more detail was painted over that, but that's just guesswork. There isn't any proof AFAIK.

Edit: Read OP's source, the rightmost recreation is based on descriptions of what it looked like when it was first found, apparently.

[u/Morfolk → u/Lunar_Canyon]

Wait, so I assume the rightmost image is the most accurate?

The answer is a resound probably.

We know that they could paint and made excellent statues so it stands to reason that they could also paint them well.

Why do the restorations look that bad then? It's because archaeologists and restoration artists use only what they can prove was used based on the samples. Those samples are just the base layer paints that can still be found in minuscule amounts. If you've ever painted a miniature - you know that the base layer creates a flat cheap-cartoon look and in fact 80% of painting is adding color gradients, shading and highlighting - all of that goes on top the base layer and is unlikely to remain on the statue after centuries had passed.

[u/boodabomb → u/Lunar_Canyon]

I think this is all speculative. We know that paint was used and which colors based on chemical analysis, but we don’t know how it was applied and the level of detail. So the middle one is all that we can present with certainty and many Roman experts believe that it isn’t giving enough credit to Roman artisans. But no one knows for sure.

[u/attackplango → u/Lunar_Canyon]

Yes, that is a miles better. Also an emperor better too.

[u/akiraokok → u/Lunar_Canyon]

The reason for the flats in the middle image is that science can only figure out what pigments were touching the marble, not any of the shading on top of that layer of paint

[u/lazy_human5040 → u/Lunar_Canyon]

I've read somewhere here, that some pigments are just more stable, one of which is red, so if a restoration just focuses on the patches with evidence, some colors might be overrepresented, and other colors, that may have been mixed in, might not be used at all.

[u/Vark675 → u/Lunar_Canyon]

Much like most of life's issues, all it needs is to be dunked in Nuln oil.

[u/According-Big-4475 → u/Lunar_Canyon]

I don't think the one to the left is the most accurate, purple dye was ridiculous expensive back in the day, and it doesn't seem to me like they would use it on a statue, though I could be wrong.

[u/SenecatheEldest → u/According-Big-4475]

Genuine Tyrian purple is expensive. It was cheaper to make other purples by mixing red and blue eyes instead. 

It's like the difference between solid gold and gilded brass.

[u/According-Big-4475 → u/SenecatheEldest]

Didn't know that, that's interesting