The ancient Greeks painted their sculptures bright colours and adorned them with metal jewellery. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century CE, tells us that statues were coloured and polished. But it was not until the late nineteenth century that excavations on the Acropolis in Athens found several statues on which traces of colour could still be seen. The Peplos Kore is one of these.
Here the Kore is shown as she is today. A peplos is the type of dress she is wearing
Athens Acropolis Museum 679
Between 1889 and 1922, probably from the Acropolis Museum
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 77 (n.9), pl. 23.2
Karo: Personality in Greek Archaic Art, 264-
Schrader: Archaischen Marmorbildwerke des Akropolis (1939), 45-
Payne & Young: Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis, 18-
Ridgway, B: Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, XXXVI (1977)
Cook, RM: Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, XXXVII (1978)
Stewart: Greek Sculpture, 123, pls. 147 &149
Karakasi: Archaic Korai (2003), 118
Discovered in 1886 on the Acropolis, Athens
