He was the first official emperor of the Roman Empire.

And if you've ever had to study Roman history,

You might be familiar with this little sculpture's very famous original.

It's called the “Augustus of Prima Porta.” It was carved in the 1st century AD,

during his reign as emperor.

Then it was lost to time, before it was dug up in the 1860s.

Today it lives in the Vatican Museums,

alongside a bunch of other famous sculptures.

But Augustus? He's not supposed to look like this.

He's supposed to look like this.

Let's get this out of the way:

Ancient Greece and Rome were really colorful.

Their buildings were full of intricate frescoes and elaborate mosaics

and covered with vibrantly painted statues Of things like epic battles, glimmering gods,

and pretty flowers.

But today, most of us picture something more

like this - brilliant white marble as far as the eye can see.

We're wrong. But it's not our fault. It's Hollywood's fault

And our high school textbooks' fault. But most of all, it's this guy's fault.

Well, not him. He's just a statue. The blame lies with Michelangelo, the guy

who sculpted him – And with many others who made white marble

statues during the Renaissance. When European artists, philosophers, and scientists

developed a renewed interest in the creations of classical Greece and Rome.

Artists like Michelangelo began studying Roman sculptures - like this one:

“Laocoön and his Sons.”

They fell in love with its lifelike figures,

dramatic scene, and pristine, white surface.

But sculptures like this weren't meant to be white.

Their paint had just faded after being buried

or left out in the open air for hundreds of years.

So when the Renaissance artists set out to imitate them,

they left their masterpieces bare too.

And that style took over inspiring generations of sculptors.

White marble became the norm.

Along the way, art historians reinforced this bias.

Namely this guy - Johann Joachim Winckelmann He's sometimes known as the father of Art history.

In the 18th century, he wrote a hugely influential book on ancient art.

In it he argued that statues like this one

- the Apollo of Belvedere - were the epitome of beauty.

Because, “the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is.”

He went out of his way to ignore obvious evidence of colored marble,

And there was a lot of it, especially after the re-discovery of the ancient Roman city

of Pompeii in the 1700s.

Pompeii's near perfectly preserved frescoes,

featured all sorts of colored statues. And one particular mural of an artist in the

act of painting a sculpture. This colorful sculpture was also found in Pompeii.

Winckelmann claimed it was too primitive to have been made by them.

But evidence wasn't just ignored. Some of it might have been destroyed.

Remember Augustus?

When archaeologists rediscovered him in the 1860s, they said his tunic was crimson, his

armor was yellow, and his “mantle” (that's this thing) was purple.

And this is him now. It's unclear if Augustus lost his color

by accident, as a result of over-cleaning, or if it was removed on purpose.

But either way, the same thing happened to a bunch of other famous monuments and sculptures.

Like the Parthenon in Athens - which once looked something like this.

By the 18th century, it had faded to something more like this, with just hints of color left.

But today, even those are gone. Luckily, art historians have since shifted

to believe that it's not about what people think looks better

It's about what's accurate. But how do they get from this to this?

To start, there are some surviving ancient descriptions of more famous sculptures,

which is how we know that the Parthenon once held a statue of the goddess Athena

that was “ivory and gold” wearing a helmet adorned with “a likeness of the sphynx”

And If you look closely at some sculptures, there are still obvious traces of color

like the remnants of deep purple on this statue's clothing.

That's how early reconstructions like these were made.

Today, scientists can extract and test those tiny samples to determine the original pigments used.

But when there aren't any visible colors,

they have another tool: Ultraviolet light. Certain pigments glow under UV light, exposing

traces that would have been otherwise invisible. When scientists photographed this archer's

legs under UV light, They saw this:

a dizzying array of geometric patterns and saturated colors.

And when they compared it to trace pigments

on a similar statue, they were able to make this reconstruction.

Which, to be clear, is about as ancient as mine

Because conservationists never add color to the original - they use 3D scanners to create

plaster replicas. Which they then painstakingly repaint, with

far greater accuracy than I can.

Seeing these sculptures in full color might

be a little shocking at first But that's probably because we've only seen

them one way for centuries.

To the Greeks and Romans, painting a sculpture made it complete.

Color could make marble seem human, or godlike.

It infused them with drama and emotion.

It brought history and mythology to life And even though these reconstructions aren't perfect,

Seeing these statues in color can bring us

a little closer to understanding what the ancient world might have looked like.