March 24th, 2017

In Ancient Greece, statues were usually made with bronze, or sometimes wood as of the 5th century BC. Wood tended to rapidly decompose, and bronze could be easily reclaimed as scrap. This meant that very little has survived from this period. Thankfully, the Romans took a fancy for recreating these sculptures in marble from the 2nd century CE onward, meaning we have a reasonable idea of what the original sculptures looked like from Roman reproductions. A very small number of original sculptures have survived from the ancient era, however. Some are bronze, and were found submerged. There are also a small number of original marble sculptures that have survived from the Hellenistic Period (the last 3 centuries BC). The Louvre's Venus de Milo and Winged Victory of Samothrace are both exquisite cases, and though the Roman sculptures are equally beautiful, the history of these two puts them in a league of their own.

-E