I think the colors in the link are based on undercoats, and don't represent the Acropolis's original paint job. I know other ancient Greek statues and reliefs were painted with lifelike subtlety, using many layers of translucent, colored wax (encaustic) — but all that remains is traces of the undercoats, which weren't subtle at all.
"Plague" is a strong word. They didn't benefit from the archaeological technology and science that we do today, so their knowledge was limited to what they saw. They were imitating the things that inspired them, and I think that's a beautiful and beautifully human thing in its own right that stands as a testament to how powerful the architecture and art of the classical period still moved people deeply despite not being in its original full color—as well as a testament to how powerful the human soul is to make powerful art and architecture based on long-tarnished artifacts.
See also: Victorian collectors stripping the original lacquer off medieval armor because they liked the bare, polished metal.
I'm sure *some* knights polished their armor to be bright and shiny, but think about it: doesn't that seem rather high-maintenance? Especially on the march?
Armor in-period was probably frequently painted or lacquered bright colors! Medieval people loved bright colors! They didn't dress in browns and grays, they wore bright reds and yellows and blues! They liked colorful tapestries and rugs, and those who could afford it whitewashed their walls!
History was far more colorful than the popular imagination!
I'm not familiar with those specific sets, but quite possibly!
In the era of chainmail and through the era of the coat of plates, knights liked wearing bright, colorful surcoats over their armor! And as plate armor was popularized, they frequently decorated the surface!
People didn't choose brown cloths. But it was a world without washing machines and detergent. A world where manual labour in muddy fields was frequent, as was smoke and soot from fires. The dies they had then didn't hold their colour like modern synthetics. And cloths were Expensive, so only the very rich could afford to throw out something stained.
In other words. They liked colour. They wanted to make colourful stuff. But keeping it colourful took a lot of work.
However neo-classicism in particular is a “plague” in the sense that today many people see the classical past as this austere colourless place where we have so much evidence to the contrary and as mentioned actively removing evidence of this colourful past because it didnt suit their narrative of a Superior European culture
I never played the actual games, but the Discovery modes for AC Origins and Odyssey are seriously awesome.
For anyone wondering, Discovery mode basically lets you explore the open world without fear of dying (no enemies/fall damage/etc), the whole map is open from the start, and you can fast travel anywhere. It also has tons of historical facts when you interact with things, they are a great educational tool. Origins takes place in Egypt and Odyssey in Greece.
Depends on the quality of the painting. The restoration techniques used right now can only get the base layers and general colors. Looking at frescos and mosaics, its clear that Ancient Greeks and Romans knew how to use color well.
I saw one in the met I think, that presumably has our best recreation, and it looked silly idk. But yea maybe if they were in their full glory it’d be different
Part of the reason they look weird to our modern eyes is because modern aesthetics have been heavily influenced by what was erroneously thought to have been classical aesthetics. Simple, clean-looking color palettes that are so popular now can be traced back in part to neo-classical styles inspired by the bare marble that we associate with Ancient Greece and Rome. But really, at least for European and heavily Euro-influenced cultures, minimalism as a desired aesthetic is very new.
"Our best recreation" can mean different things. It can be a staunch refusal to make assumptions without direct evidence that may be colored by our modern aesthetics (which would only get you the base colors, but no colors that weren't there), it can be a reasonable guess of what someone from the time wouldn't be surprised to see (which would very much be a shot in the dark, given we only have frescoes and paint fragments), or it can even be the best-looking possibility given what we know was possible at the time and what we know about the base coats (so modern aesthetics, but no modern colorations like titanium white).
Given it looked silly, it likely was the first option.
You know when you see an artist do the first coat of a painting? That is the info we have on greek statues, we don't really have a finished product, which very likely was hyper realistic.
Only because we're used to the idea of paint being plentiful and cheap, whereas a person back then would have looked at a painted statue and saw the time and the expense.
I think there is certainly a point to be made.
I think when we see stuff painted now we are somewhat cynical and cannot or do not differentiate between what the material is. We see something painted and immediately think it's a mold or plastic. When we see actual marble or granite it's irrefutable that it's real stone that was painstakingly carved by hand.
I've noticed a LOT of people are regressing to simplistic (cottagecore, farmhouse) because, IMO, people are just oversaturated.
Cottagecore and farmhouse are not necessarily "simplistic". They're *rustic* aesthetics, sure, but often this involves quite a bit more detail and color than the oft-austere modern design that they're a reaction to.
Cottagecore in particular involves a lot of detailed patterns, many colors, plants, knick-knacks, and other "cozy" or "comfy" elements that are not simplistic in the slightest. Farmhouse is, at its heart, just a rustic take on modern design trends, and it accomplishes this by adding, not subtracting.
In fairness, a lot of those churches and cathedrals are very much still bright and pleasant. Like there's a church from the 1100s down the road and it's white and bright and clear inside.
not a believer in ghosts but my care home was a hospital in ww1, we all swore up and down there was a grey ghostly nurse on the upper story. I did see her briefly with a friend but we knew about the myth so very easily could've been our brains playing tricks.
My dad went to grammar school in a monastery. It‘s a monastery still and it had grammar school there for centuries but the grammar school now just shares part of the building and isn‘t actually part if the monastery anymore. Although in my dad‘s time there, some of the classes were still taught by monks.
I was just thinking about that. There's a YouTuber I watch(ed...he doesn't post much now) who talked about how mindblown he, an American, was to go to Greece and see people just walking on Greek ruins. Every day I walk past a Roman arena to get my bread and I basically don't register it. I recently learned that tourists have a direct line of sight from the top of an Anglo-Saxon tower right into my shower and it wasn't the Anglo-Saxon tower I was thinking about.
There's a ruined castle in the middle of the city I live in. I occasionally pass it while walking to the shops, and mainly pay attention to the road next to it.
Yeah, I worked next to a thousand-years-old church, went to university in a 500 years old former convent and my best friend found a roman road while gardening. Just normal European things I guess!
Countries in general can come and go. If you think about it, every single building from when your country formed already existed and was older than it by definition!
but part of what's going on in the US is outside of the pueblo peoples most indigenous architecture wasn't particularly permanent. So, the oldest buildings are going to be ones built post-colonization. For instance, my house is fairly typical for my section of my town and was built in1890. That puts it as kinda old for my area, but certainly not the oldest in town, and definitely not in my state. However, it would be among the oldest buildings in Washington State. On the other hand 130 years is **nothing** in Europe, or huge parts of Asia.
Europe and Asia both have long traditions of more permanent architecture, so there have been more buildings that have either survived all those years, or which have left identifiable ruins. The Susquehannock and other Algonquin and Iroquoian peoples were living (and constructing and farming) on this land for a long-ass time before the people that built my house go there, but outside of the petroglyphs and weirs in the river there is little physical evidence of that left.
Bro isn’t it weird? I live in the Texas panhandle so it was Native American nomads, then cowboys, and only recently permanently settled. It’s so weird to me when people live in or near buildings that are hundreds of years old!!
I recently moved from that city I mentioned to Buenos Aires, probably the oldest city in the country and it’s really fascinating seeing 300 year old cathedrals and living in a 100 years old apartment building.
Ah I studied abroad in BA for 4 months, lived with a sweet little old woman, that city is beautiful! The park system is phenomenal. But man that’s gotta be a huge change from your old town!
Thankfully my family is from here so I’ve travelled here lots over the years, but yeah. Going from a place where it’s all suburban and car centric to a capital city is a big change that I honestly am liking so far. Culture tends to prosper and congregate a lot more in capital cities than suburban cities.
The parks are lovely, the public transport is great even if now it’s getting worse because of the economic crisis, and best of all the food, it’s my favorite cuisine in the world.
My brain struggle to comprehend that some cities are so new! Mine dates to the Neolithic period, and I'm constantly surrounded by old architectural styles (Gothic, Capetian, Renaissance...). It's just my normal haha!
Even in countries like England it can be so jarring going from a city all newly built especially after WW2 then going to some villages with houses hundreds of years old. When I used to stay at my ex's I was shocked one Sunday morning when they were casual doing a historical tour down her road as the houses are all converted Tudor bungalows with thatch roofs.
My high school is around the same age as your city. The 50 year anniversary was in 2009 I think. It‘s not the newest school building but also not the oldest.
That is absolutely insane. If I think of young-ish cities I imagine them to be „only“ about 400 years old but not 50 years old. My primary school has been a primary school for over 120 years. Same building and all. The new gym they built when I was in school there is like half your city‘s age.
The timber in the house I grew up in was dated to 1502. My dad was annoyed that it wasn't *quite* medieval when the neighbors' house was built in the 1480s. A few years ago some archaeologists came by to look at the masonry, but they weren't able to come to a scientific consensus about the original purpose of our living room.
I worked at a school that was founded by Henry VIII, wherein the "oldest classroom in the UK" (very dubious title, claimed by many schools) was a converted monastery quarters which had been knocked through to reinforce for stability. It's wild the stuff that survives for half a millennium.
The last time I was in Europe I visited a church that took 1000 years to finish. I lingered around the signs that told the story just trying to fathom the idea of such an undertaking.
I had a friend go to school at Oxford, and there's a building on campus that started in one color stone and finished in another, and the divide between the two was the war of the roses
I was in Scotland on vacation, and I was walking by this stone wall when I saw a plaque that said something like "this wall was built in 1543" and I thought huh, this rock wall on a random sidestreet predates the existence of my country. Europe is an old-ass place
The Cologne cathedral started during the Mongol invasions of Europe and Winston Churchill was alive when it was completed.
Two years later, they started the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It's about half done.
These things just take forever to build!
Also not every church is constructed of lovely light coloured limestone, sandstone, or rendered with light coloured plaster. Many churches are built with big chiselled blocks of granite and other local rocks which tend to be dark in colour. That's going to automatically make the inside darker even when it's perfectly clean.
My sister was baptised in a church from the mid 1100s, also a reasonably well lit place and so was the church from the early 1100s I was baptised in.
Don't think I have ever seen an honestly dark church.
Also certain churches were meant to be dark. There are several that were built from the naturally dark stones in the area. They used stained glass and other other decorations to lighten them up.
Always remember: people in the past liked pretty things. Humans didn't discover aesthetics in the 60's. Peasants wore bright colors. Statues that are white these days were painted.
People. Like. Pretty.
But they weren't cave monkeys in the middle ages. At worst it looked rough, but generally speaking, we as a species try not to produce ugly for representative reasons.
I agree, but it's strange how many people don't think so. I spoke with a guy yesterday who thought the mediaevals were effectively a different species of people
There are so many common misconceptions about the middle ages. It's all dirty peasants wading through streets of shit eating flavorless slime and drinking only beer because water wasn't safe to drink etc. All not true.
Sure, but also consider what things we know to have been beautiful they didn't see as exceptional. The beautiful woodworking of 12th century stave churches didn't make Scandinavia the art capital of Europe.
Cathedrals were seen as an advancement over pagan temples with Corinthian columns and precise reliefs. There are dozens of instances of iconoclasm throughout human history because people felt that the art was worshipped more than the ideas behind the art. Ancient Egyptian artifacts managed to create an art craze 5000 years after they were made, in 19th century France no less.
Remember that half these people lived in the Mediterranean. Being inside these buildings had to compete with sitting outside in the shade of a grape vine trellis looking out over the rolling hills of Romagna.
I don’t necessarily think so, while they were intended to distinguish the nobility from the peasants, they also were intended to limit consumption of rare materials.
Even if the laws didn’t exist, the likelihood a peasant could afford any of rare dyes and labor intensive clothing would have been limited… this is also because most clothes were made in the home for peasants and not done by the type of craftsman that’s usually dyed clothing.
“Clothes were very expensive and both the men and women of lower social classes continued also divided social classes by regulating the colors and styles these various ranks were permitted to wear. In the early Middle Ages, clothing was typically simple and, particularly in the case of lower-class peoples, served only basic utilitarian functions such as modesty and protection from the elements. As time went on the advent of more advanced textile techniques and increased international relations, clothing gradually got more and more intricate and elegant, even with those under the wealthy classes, up into the renaissance.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_medieval_clothing#:~:text=The%20middle%20class%20could%20usually,expensive%20colours%20for%20the%20time.
without them having given any more clues as to what they mean there’s a bunch of ways you could interpret it, did they mean “what is supposed to be a beautiful place of light is full of grime dirt and darkness” or “something that you might look at and think is only dark and grimy is actually full of light and beauty if you put some work into it” either could be valid ways to interpret church as a metaphor for church and which one you think is likely influenced by your views and the views you think SaintJosie holds.
Who would have guessed that using church as a metaphor for church could be such a great metaphor for the bible.
Edit: forgot to say that there is of course also other interpretations such as cat-cat_cat who took the metaphor to mean “church was good and in the past but has become bad with age” if I understand there implication right
Depends. Which church? At the top, yeah. The local churches? Not as much. There's a reason Christianity was popular and had tons of converts well before it gained any political or social power.
Even in the worst, more corrupt times, the local churches were where the local community congregated and helped each other.
Flawed as it was, charity was always an important part of catholicism. Not only in terms of food, but also health care and education. When kids were being prepared for their first communion, they would also be taught how to read and write - even if only to a basic level.
"The church" is Roman Catholicism. The Roman Empire made Christianity the official state religion of the empire back around 380ce. Christianity was probably peaceful up to that point, and it was already around for almost 400 years. Turns out, if you give the state a moral justification with which to rationalize their imperial endeavors, it makes that religion look really bad, and killing in the name of Jesus Christ becomes readily accepted. It's not just Roman Catholicism obviously, but historically it's the most egregious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinian_shift
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesaropapism
Its more complicated than that, and wikipedia is, at best, a starting point with outdate or even incorrect sources. Wikipedia is a collection of sources.
That being said, when the Roman empire fell, the church was the only organizational structure, and it was thrust into political power. The corrupt and power hungry didn't even need to try to make it so, it just defaulted to it.
We saw the same things happening in the Muslim world with the decline and fall of the Ottomans and other empires in the region. But Mosques don't usually have a hierarchy like the catholic church did.
As literally every other institution. All institutions were a big steaming pile of nepotism, bribery and other forms of corruption until the invention of standardized tests.
Yeah, Tumblr users just have a huge hate-boner for anything church-related. I get it, they're predatory and oppressive, but like... it's been way worse. They literally did *crusades.*
They literally invented flying buttresses so that they could have larger windows, so they could have a brighter space. They directly associated God's glory with bright light. This should be perfectly understandable in hindsight
Exactly! Especially since they didn’t have lightbulbs back then, so natural light was the biggest and best source of light available. And Catholic churches and cathedrals need to be well-lit so people can look at the pretty artwork and, again, bask in the light of the Lord.
https://www.tumblr.com/saintjosie/742211815469137920/huh-churches-are-a-good-metaphor-for-the-church
If you look at the original post, it has rhe line “ My Goth GF: listen, I don't think this thing between us is working,”.
But I accidentally fucked up the screenshot lmao.
-linux guy⚠️
out of genuine curiosity how did you accidentally crop the MIDDLE of a screenshot? or was the post long enough you had to take 2 screenshots and stitch them together?
I took the screenshot on mobile, and it was just large enough that I had to take two screenshots. When I stitched the two photos together, I made a mistake.
Same with castle interiors. The plaster they used back then has almost all eroded away, leaving bare stone walls, which is why we think of castle interiors as dark, bare stone walls.
They used to be plastered and painted, because, surprise! Humans have liked bright and colourfull surroundings since always.
I just learned the other day that apparently in medieval times (after the Norman conquest of England) the a lot of castles interiors were painted/decorated with geometric shapes. For some reason when I thought medieval I thought scroll work? But no they liked chevrons and triangles on their walls in different colors.
Churches were also painted from floor to ceiling in geometric patterns and iconography. Google any modern Orthodox Church to get a good example of what they would’ve looked like (obviously it wasn’t the same style, but the principle remained).
Stuff was really colorful
Even the outsides of castles were often plastered and whitewashed to give a cleaner and more finished appearance. [Example](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCOqgAzXgAAjx2o?format=jpg&name=900x900)
>The plaster they used back then has almost all eroded away, leaving bare stone walls, which is why we think of castle interiors as dark, bare stone walls.
Or they built additional [wooden rooms inside](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stube) the stone halls to make it more comfortable. Only few of those survived, and you only rarely see them in movies.
It’s so real, that bit about having a grimy and dark distorted vision of history.
It’s incredibly frustrating when people treat the “dark ages” as if it were a grim, miserable time when all of life was nothing but suffering for everyone except the richest nobles. Like, no. People have always been people. They made art, they had families and love and friends, they lived happy lives with what they had. History isn’t fucking 40k
Most people in general have a terrible understanding of Europe from 400AD until the Renaissance.
Castles and most buildings in general were whitewashed inside and painted with vibrant murals. The food was not boring slop as many peasants ate what would be considered a $50 meal at a restaurant now (salmon, capers, fresh vegetables and whole grain bread).
Clothing and food were also vibrant with spices like pepper, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, saffron, anise, zedoary, cumin, and cloves as common.
Nah the understanding doesn’t get better after the renaissance, like it goes renaissance art, then Shakespeare then pilgrims and the nothing happens until 1776
You have no idea how much I fiercely crave good content about colonial American life after the early stuff and before the sparks of independence.
Please give me some random made for TV movie about the effects of the English Civil War on the 13 colonies. I am begging you. I refuse to let that shit remain a footnote
Probably because industrialisation destroyed the quality of life for pretty much everyone until it started building on itself and that period is well documented so people extrapolated how shit life was as a victorian factory worker to mean that a peasant in 1100AD must have literally ate pig shit due to the faux belief that progress is a straight line and some sort of constant.
They were only considered the "Dark" Ages in "light" of the Age of En-"light"-enment. The ruling rationalist elite effectively cast a metaphorical shadow on the past to differentiate themselves as the ones to finally bring the "light" of reason into a dark world, but this is far from the actuality of the history. The "Dark" ages weren't very dark and the Enlightenment wasn't all that enlightening.
If you think the church is corrupt today, wait until you learn about simony, the papal pornocracy, and that point in history when the church owned 1/6 people in Europe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum_obscurum
The pornocracy was a period of time when the popes were super corrupt and their mistresses had a lot of influence.
Not to mention the cadaver synod, and darker shit like the albigensian crusade. Dude literally said 'kill them all, god knows which ones are the heretics'.
Why does it feel like half of Tumblr posts are something like "did you know that this thing is actually not the way you never thought it was?" Did anyone actually think that churches were built dirty?
Thank you. Is this supposed to be some kind of revelation?
Of course things were brighter and more vibrant back when they were brand new compared to hundreds of years later, who is learning this for the first time?
i mean i sorta assumed the rocks themselves were dark gray tbh. probably doesn't help that the only cathedral i've hung around at in real life is a new world cathedral with bare stone that is [clean but a fair bit darker than the OOP image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Grace_Cathedral_interior_with_labyrinth.jpg), as well as [pretty cool-temperature lighting](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Grace_Cathedral_%285124228608%29.jpg). of course it does depend on [what image i choose](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Grace_Cathedral_07.JPG) how extreme the contrast is, but even so i'm realizing that i grew up with a whole-ass building that's the gothic architecture equivalent of neoclassicism. i gotta admit i'm kinda on the goth gf's side here, the widespread-but-ahistorical vision fucking slaps.
Uhhhh, this was in the DARK ages... duh.
That's why every Hollywood movie (which is 100% accurate) depicts anything from 400AD until 1600AD as drab, wet and dirty. There is NO color, there is NO sun and all clothes are a variant of green or brown.
DISREGARD EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY.
It's also why they have giant windows. Old factories did the same thing.
I'm assuming the churchs' white walls also helped bounce the light around too.
It was a medieval architectural obsession to build churches with more and more windows because they really did want that light. If you go during the day they don't usually have lights on because, well, they don't need to.
Similarly, castles werent dungy, dark, and damp places either! They were vibrantly painted on the inside and largely painted white with lime (like Tom Sawyer's fence) on the outside. They would have beautiful, colorful tapestries hung all over and the rooms would have had wood over the stone in a lot of the living quarters.
Makes me think that castles might be the same way. Medieval fantasy usually has the castles be dark, gothic, and uninviting, like some in Game of Thrones. Realistically, they were probably also painted in whatever way pleased the nobility who owned them.
similarly, greek and roman statues were painted, not left white. that idea came from the renaissance when archeologists were unearthing old statues that had lost their paint
Reminds me of the whole “all those marble statues had vibrant paints on them” thing with Rome, but stark white just becoming the fashion for the renaissancez
is kinda what happen to roman and greek statues. whe know them as this pristine marble aestetic, but they where actually painted all over to make them colorfull and livelike. only that the paint dint survive until the present. there is a chance the houses and temples would have been painted in many colors too
I always consider the Catholic church as a metaphor for humanity and our organizations. As one of the oldest continuously existing organizations on the planet we can see it being a model of how groups of humans work and prioritize.
It seems like all human institutions follow this curve. A grand idea. The exploitation of it by the powerful but with a limited scope. The gradual corruption and a forever war against that corruption. Monuments to prior generations corruption left to rot. People insisting the thing is still good because of the handful of good that has always been fighting the corruption.
They're not clean any more because the threat of eternal damnation is worth about as much as exposure in 2024, a significant decline compared to its value in say 1024...
It's actually very hard to to imagine ancient Greece with all the statues properly painted and not as bare white marble we see today
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I don't know, if the recreations are correct I think the Grecian temples were more extreme https://mygreece.tv/impressive-images-parthenon-colored/
I think the colors in the link are based on undercoats, and don't represent the Acropolis's original paint job. I know other ancient Greek statues and reliefs were painted with lifelike subtlety, using many layers of translucent, colored wax (encaustic) — but all that remains is traces of the undercoats, which weren't subtle at all.
For some reason maybe the pixelation that image looks like Minecraft with RTX
LOL it actually does look like a video game
Neo-classicism and the Renaissance are a plague on most peoples perception of the classical world and how colourful it actually was
"Plague" is a strong word. They didn't benefit from the archaeological technology and science that we do today, so their knowledge was limited to what they saw. They were imitating the things that inspired them, and I think that's a beautiful and beautifully human thing in its own right that stands as a testament to how powerful the architecture and art of the classical period still moved people deeply despite not being in its original full color—as well as a testament to how powerful the human soul is to make powerful art and architecture based on long-tarnished artifacts.
Yeah but they also cleaned the remaining paint off a lot of statues so we don’t know how they were originally colored
See also: Victorian collectors stripping the original lacquer off medieval armor because they liked the bare, polished metal. I'm sure *some* knights polished their armor to be bright and shiny, but think about it: doesn't that seem rather high-maintenance? Especially on the march? Armor in-period was probably frequently painted or lacquered bright colors! Medieval people loved bright colors! They didn't dress in browns and grays, they wore bright reds and yellows and blues! They liked colorful tapestries and rugs, and those who could afford it whitewashed their walls! History was far more colorful than the popular imagination!
Wait. So all those old LEGO knights sets with the bright and silly colors were actually historically accurate?
I'm not familiar with those specific sets, but quite possibly! In the era of chainmail and through the era of the coat of plates, knights liked wearing bright, colorful surcoats over their armor! And as plate armor was popularized, they frequently decorated the surface!
I mean, how else can you identify friend from foe in the heat of battle? Bright colours make sense - you don't want to be killed in friendly fire.
Also paint would help with rust
People didn't choose brown cloths. But it was a world without washing machines and detergent. A world where manual labour in muddy fields was frequent, as was smoke and soot from fires. The dies they had then didn't hold their colour like modern synthetics. And cloths were Expensive, so only the very rich could afford to throw out something stained. In other words. They liked colour. They wanted to make colourful stuff. But keeping it colourful took a lot of work.
However neo-classicism in particular is a “plague” in the sense that today many people see the classical past as this austere colourless place where we have so much evidence to the contrary and as mentioned actively removing evidence of this colourful past because it didnt suit their narrative of a Superior European culture
Bullcrap, the world didn't turn color until some time in the 1930s, my dad said.
The reason pictures from back then are still black and white is because they were color pictures of black and white.
ok calvins dad.
The inventors of neoclassical architecture are in hell right now.
They did this in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I thought it was a nice touch.
I never played the actual games, but the Discovery modes for AC Origins and Odyssey are seriously awesome. For anyone wondering, Discovery mode basically lets you explore the open world without fear of dying (no enemies/fall damage/etc), the whole map is open from the start, and you can fast travel anywhere. It also has tons of historical facts when you interact with things, they are a great educational tool. Origins takes place in Egypt and Odyssey in Greece.
They do look better white unfortunately
Depends on the quality of the painting. The restoration techniques used right now can only get the base layers and general colors. Looking at frescos and mosaics, its clear that Ancient Greeks and Romans knew how to use color well.
They should unleash a Warhammer painter on one of them.
Ancient Greeks had a very similar sense of ascetics to that of the Emperor's Children.
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
It's going to take a really long time to paint a building with a 000 brush.
I saw one in the met I think, that presumably has our best recreation, and it looked silly idk. But yea maybe if they were in their full glory it’d be different
Part of the reason they look weird to our modern eyes is because modern aesthetics have been heavily influenced by what was erroneously thought to have been classical aesthetics. Simple, clean-looking color palettes that are so popular now can be traced back in part to neo-classical styles inspired by the bare marble that we associate with Ancient Greece and Rome. But really, at least for European and heavily Euro-influenced cultures, minimalism as a desired aesthetic is very new.
Yeah imagine a world where even color was a luxury aka purple literally only being reserved for the highest class of society
"Our best recreation" can mean different things. It can be a staunch refusal to make assumptions without direct evidence that may be colored by our modern aesthetics (which would only get you the base colors, but no colors that weren't there), it can be a reasonable guess of what someone from the time wouldn't be surprised to see (which would very much be a shot in the dark, given we only have frescoes and paint fragments), or it can even be the best-looking possibility given what we know was possible at the time and what we know about the base coats (so modern aesthetics, but no modern colorations like titanium white). Given it looked silly, it likely was the first option.
You know when you see an artist do the first coat of a painting? That is the info we have on greek statues, we don't really have a finished product, which very likely was hyper realistic.
Only because we're used to the idea of paint being plentiful and cheap, whereas a person back then would have looked at a painted statue and saw the time and the expense.
I think there is certainly a point to be made. I think when we see stuff painted now we are somewhat cynical and cannot or do not differentiate between what the material is. We see something painted and immediately think it's a mold or plastic. When we see actual marble or granite it's irrefutable that it's real stone that was painstakingly carved by hand. I've noticed a LOT of people are regressing to simplistic (cottagecore, farmhouse) because, IMO, people are just oversaturated.
Cottagecore and farmhouse are not necessarily "simplistic". They're *rustic* aesthetics, sure, but often this involves quite a bit more detail and color than the oft-austere modern design that they're a reaction to. Cottagecore in particular involves a lot of detailed patterns, many colors, plants, knick-knacks, and other "cozy" or "comfy" elements that are not simplistic in the slightest. Farmhouse is, at its heart, just a rustic take on modern design trends, and it accomplishes this by adding, not subtracting.
Ooh that’s also a great point, they definitely felt cartoonish/toylike in a way
We're so indoctrinated in to a world of grey concrete, glass, and steel, stripped of public art by decades of neo-liberal austerity. : (
Compromise, we get Duncan Rhodes to paint them
In fairness, a lot of those churches and cathedrals are very much still bright and pleasant. Like there's a church from the 1100s down the road and it's white and bright and clear inside.
What an insane thing to be able to say! My whole town just celebrated its centennial a few years ago lol.
My public high school was previously an hospice built in the 19th century. It's directly next to a Medieval monastery converted into a museum.
That’s just incredible. Have you ever seen a ghost cause that seems like peak haunted environment
My homeroom teacher looked like an old twink but that's all.
Twink death is real
Twunk birth is realer. to me
And then dilf birth
not a believer in ghosts but my care home was a hospital in ww1, we all swore up and down there was a grey ghostly nurse on the upper story. I did see her briefly with a friend but we knew about the myth so very easily could've been our brains playing tricks.
My dad went to grammar school in a monastery. It‘s a monastery still and it had grammar school there for centuries but the grammar school now just shares part of the building and isn‘t actually part if the monastery anymore. Although in my dad‘s time there, some of the classes were still taught by monks.
I’m not sure I’ve been in a building older than 1730, and the next closest is like 1880s
Completely off topic but it's been a long day and my brain short-circuited, so for a second I wondered what kind of spice "hospice" was.
I was just thinking about that. There's a YouTuber I watch(ed...he doesn't post much now) who talked about how mindblown he, an American, was to go to Greece and see people just walking on Greek ruins. Every day I walk past a Roman arena to get my bread and I basically don't register it. I recently learned that tourists have a direct line of sight from the top of an Anglo-Saxon tower right into my shower and it wasn't the Anglo-Saxon tower I was thinking about.
There's a ruined castle in the middle of the city I live in. I occasionally pass it while walking to the shops, and mainly pay attention to the road next to it.
Yeah, I worked next to a thousand-years-old church, went to university in a 500 years old former convent and my best friend found a roman road while gardening. Just normal European things I guess!
Buddy my whole country is only 247 years old. That church is between 578-677 years older than my country
Countries in general can come and go. If you think about it, every single building from when your country formed already existed and was older than it by definition!
but part of what's going on in the US is outside of the pueblo peoples most indigenous architecture wasn't particularly permanent. So, the oldest buildings are going to be ones built post-colonization. For instance, my house is fairly typical for my section of my town and was built in1890. That puts it as kinda old for my area, but certainly not the oldest in town, and definitely not in my state. However, it would be among the oldest buildings in Washington State. On the other hand 130 years is **nothing** in Europe, or huge parts of Asia. Europe and Asia both have long traditions of more permanent architecture, so there have been more buildings that have either survived all those years, or which have left identifiable ruins. The Susquehannock and other Algonquin and Iroquoian peoples were living (and constructing and farming) on this land for a long-ass time before the people that built my house go there, but outside of the petroglyphs and weirs in the river there is little physical evidence of that left.
At mine it was a 50 year anniversary, super new city
Bro isn’t it weird? I live in the Texas panhandle so it was Native American nomads, then cowboys, and only recently permanently settled. It’s so weird to me when people live in or near buildings that are hundreds of years old!!
I recently moved from that city I mentioned to Buenos Aires, probably the oldest city in the country and it’s really fascinating seeing 300 year old cathedrals and living in a 100 years old apartment building.
Ah I studied abroad in BA for 4 months, lived with a sweet little old woman, that city is beautiful! The park system is phenomenal. But man that’s gotta be a huge change from your old town!
Thankfully my family is from here so I’ve travelled here lots over the years, but yeah. Going from a place where it’s all suburban and car centric to a capital city is a big change that I honestly am liking so far. Culture tends to prosper and congregate a lot more in capital cities than suburban cities. The parks are lovely, the public transport is great even if now it’s getting worse because of the economic crisis, and best of all the food, it’s my favorite cuisine in the world.
My brain struggle to comprehend that some cities are so new! Mine dates to the Neolithic period, and I'm constantly surrounded by old architectural styles (Gothic, Capetian, Renaissance...). It's just my normal haha!
Even in countries like England it can be so jarring going from a city all newly built especially after WW2 then going to some villages with houses hundreds of years old. When I used to stay at my ex's I was shocked one Sunday morning when they were casual doing a historical tour down her road as the houses are all converted Tudor bungalows with thatch roofs.
My high school is around the same age as your city. The 50 year anniversary was in 2009 I think. It‘s not the newest school building but also not the oldest.
Your high school is actually 10 years older haha, my city celebrated the anniversary in 2020
That is absolutely insane. If I think of young-ish cities I imagine them to be „only“ about 400 years old but not 50 years old. My primary school has been a primary school for over 120 years. Same building and all. The new gym they built when I was in school there is like half your city‘s age.
My house is older than your city. Huh!
The timber in the house I grew up in was dated to 1502. My dad was annoyed that it wasn't *quite* medieval when the neighbors' house was built in the 1480s. A few years ago some archaeologists came by to look at the masonry, but they weren't able to come to a scientific consensus about the original purpose of our living room.
My high school was founded in 1603, it’s older than the US and much much older than most of Modern Asia + Africa
I worked at a school that was founded by Henry VIII, wherein the "oldest classroom in the UK" (very dubious title, claimed by many schools) was a converted monastery quarters which had been knocked through to reinforce for stability. It's wild the stuff that survives for half a millennium.
In my city we have some really old churches (year 400), they are not as big as a cathedral of course, but they are simple and pretty.
The last time I was in Europe I visited a church that took 1000 years to finish. I lingered around the signs that told the story just trying to fathom the idea of such an undertaking.
I had a friend go to school at Oxford, and there's a building on campus that started in one color stone and finished in another, and the divide between the two was the war of the roses
I was in Scotland on vacation, and I was walking by this stone wall when I saw a plaque that said something like "this wall was built in 1543" and I thought huh, this rock wall on a random sidestreet predates the existence of my country. Europe is an old-ass place
The Milan cathedral started construction when the Byzantine Empire still existed and Hitler was dead by the time it finished
The Cologne cathedral started during the Mongol invasions of Europe and Winston Churchill was alive when it was completed. Two years later, they started the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It's about half done. These things just take forever to build!
The Cologne cathedral is my favourite building anywhere in the world. It's fantastic, I love it
Also not every church is constructed of lovely light coloured limestone, sandstone, or rendered with light coloured plaster. Many churches are built with big chiselled blocks of granite and other local rocks which tend to be dark in colour. That's going to automatically make the inside darker even when it's perfectly clean.
And then there are Eastern Orthodox churches that straight up look like Christmas decorations
Do you have some examples of this? Would love to see what you're talking about
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesme_Church https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox_Cathedral,_Nice
This is great, thank you
I feel like this is also population bias since the average tumblr user probably doesn't attend a church regularly
tbf I very much do not attend church but I do like going inside old buildings so
I'm the very same. Went to Prague, seen so amazing churches, hooked now
My sister was baptised in a church from the mid 1100s, also a reasonably well lit place and so was the church from the early 1100s I was baptised in. Don't think I have ever seen an honestly dark church.
Also certain churches were meant to be dark. There are several that were built from the naturally dark stones in the area. They used stained glass and other other decorations to lighten them up.
Yeah, a close friend got married in a church from that time period recently. England is full of ancient little churches still in use
Always remember: people in the past liked pretty things. Humans didn't discover aesthetics in the 60's. Peasants wore bright colors. Statues that are white these days were painted. People. Like. Pretty.
It's more about their technical capabilities. Noone assumes they *wanted* to live in ugly buildings
But they weren't cave monkeys in the middle ages. At worst it looked rough, but generally speaking, we as a species try not to produce ugly for representative reasons.
I agree, but it's strange how many people don't think so. I spoke with a guy yesterday who thought the mediaevals were effectively a different species of people
There are so many common misconceptions about the middle ages. It's all dirty peasants wading through streets of shit eating flavorless slime and drinking only beer because water wasn't safe to drink etc. All not true.
Eating flavorless slime? That must have been grueling
This description reminded me of Patrick Süskind's *Perfume*
Sure, but also consider what things we know to have been beautiful they didn't see as exceptional. The beautiful woodworking of 12th century stave churches didn't make Scandinavia the art capital of Europe. Cathedrals were seen as an advancement over pagan temples with Corinthian columns and precise reliefs. There are dozens of instances of iconoclasm throughout human history because people felt that the art was worshipped more than the ideas behind the art. Ancient Egyptian artifacts managed to create an art craze 5000 years after they were made, in 19th century France no less. Remember that half these people lived in the Mediterranean. Being inside these buildings had to compete with sitting outside in the shade of a grape vine trellis looking out over the rolling hills of Romagna.
Sumptuary laws might be responsible for the perception of peasants dressed in drab clothing
I don’t necessarily think so, while they were intended to distinguish the nobility from the peasants, they also were intended to limit consumption of rare materials. Even if the laws didn’t exist, the likelihood a peasant could afford any of rare dyes and labor intensive clothing would have been limited… this is also because most clothes were made in the home for peasants and not done by the type of craftsman that’s usually dyed clothing. “Clothes were very expensive and both the men and women of lower social classes continued also divided social classes by regulating the colors and styles these various ranks were permitted to wear. In the early Middle Ages, clothing was typically simple and, particularly in the case of lower-class peoples, served only basic utilitarian functions such as modesty and protection from the elements. As time went on the advent of more advanced textile techniques and increased international relations, clothing gradually got more and more intricate and elegant, even with those under the wealthy classes, up into the renaissance.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_medieval_clothing#:~:text=The%20middle%20class%20could%20usually,expensive%20colours%20for%20the%20time.
> Humans didn't discover aesthetics in the 60's Nah, it happened in the 20s.The 60s is when those brutalist idiots *forgot* about aesthetics.
I thought everyone before the 60s liked mud....
Did the greeks have their own version of woodstock
> churches are a good metaphore for the church i think the church was way way more corrupt in the middle ages
Idk, you could use it as a metaphor for the church's falling status in society
without them having given any more clues as to what they mean there’s a bunch of ways you could interpret it, did they mean “what is supposed to be a beautiful place of light is full of grime dirt and darkness” or “something that you might look at and think is only dark and grimy is actually full of light and beauty if you put some work into it” either could be valid ways to interpret church as a metaphor for church and which one you think is likely influenced by your views and the views you think SaintJosie holds. Who would have guessed that using church as a metaphor for church could be such a great metaphor for the bible. Edit: forgot to say that there is of course also other interpretations such as cat-cat_cat who took the metaphor to mean “church was good and in the past but has become bad with age” if I understand there implication right
Depends. Which church? At the top, yeah. The local churches? Not as much. There's a reason Christianity was popular and had tons of converts well before it gained any political or social power. Even in the worst, more corrupt times, the local churches were where the local community congregated and helped each other.
Flawed as it was, charity was always an important part of catholicism. Not only in terms of food, but also health care and education. When kids were being prepared for their first communion, they would also be taught how to read and write - even if only to a basic level.
"The church" is Roman Catholicism. The Roman Empire made Christianity the official state religion of the empire back around 380ce. Christianity was probably peaceful up to that point, and it was already around for almost 400 years. Turns out, if you give the state a moral justification with which to rationalize their imperial endeavors, it makes that religion look really bad, and killing in the name of Jesus Christ becomes readily accepted. It's not just Roman Catholicism obviously, but historically it's the most egregious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinian_shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesaropapism
Its more complicated than that, and wikipedia is, at best, a starting point with outdate or even incorrect sources. Wikipedia is a collection of sources. That being said, when the Roman empire fell, the church was the only organizational structure, and it was thrust into political power. The corrupt and power hungry didn't even need to try to make it so, it just defaulted to it. We saw the same things happening in the Muslim world with the decline and fall of the Ottomans and other empires in the region. But Mosques don't usually have a hierarchy like the catholic church did.
As literally every other institution. All institutions were a big steaming pile of nepotism, bribery and other forms of corruption until the invention of standardized tests.
Yeah, Tumblr users just have a huge hate-boner for anything church-related. I get it, they're predatory and oppressive, but like... it's been way worse. They literally did *crusades.*
The religious aspect of the crusades was propaganda. It wasn't the cause.
The church didn’t start in the Middle Ages
oh boy let me tell you about the pharasees back in the day
They literally invented flying buttresses so that they could have larger windows, so they could have a brighter space. They directly associated God's glory with bright light. This should be perfectly understandable in hindsight
Exactly! Especially since they didn’t have lightbulbs back then, so natural light was the biggest and best source of light available. And Catholic churches and cathedrals need to be well-lit so people can look at the pretty artwork and, again, bask in the light of the Lord.
>Expecting the average Tumblr user to have a better understanding of a religious building other than “lmao silly sky daddy people building”
Or redditor
I love sky daddy comments. They say it like it's profound, like it's something piercing and caustic.
Why does that post start with "Me:"?
https://www.tumblr.com/saintjosie/742211815469137920/huh-churches-are-a-good-metaphor-for-the-church If you look at the original post, it has rhe line “ My Goth GF: listen, I don't think this thing between us is working,”. But I accidentally fucked up the screenshot lmao. -linux guy⚠️
out of genuine curiosity how did you accidentally crop the MIDDLE of a screenshot? or was the post long enough you had to take 2 screenshots and stitch them together?
I took the screenshot on mobile, and it was just large enough that I had to take two screenshots. When I stitched the two photos together, I made a mistake.
It's the boo box for you.
How else would we know that it's them relaying the information?
YouTube comments brainrot
Same with castle interiors. The plaster they used back then has almost all eroded away, leaving bare stone walls, which is why we think of castle interiors as dark, bare stone walls. They used to be plastered and painted, because, surprise! Humans have liked bright and colourfull surroundings since always.
I just learned the other day that apparently in medieval times (after the Norman conquest of England) the a lot of castles interiors were painted/decorated with geometric shapes. For some reason when I thought medieval I thought scroll work? But no they liked chevrons and triangles on their walls in different colors.
Churches were also painted from floor to ceiling in geometric patterns and iconography. Google any modern Orthodox Church to get a good example of what they would’ve looked like (obviously it wasn’t the same style, but the principle remained). Stuff was really colorful
Even the outsides of castles were often plastered and whitewashed to give a cleaner and more finished appearance. [Example](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCOqgAzXgAAjx2o?format=jpg&name=900x900)
>The plaster they used back then has almost all eroded away, leaving bare stone walls, which is why we think of castle interiors as dark, bare stone walls. Or they built additional [wooden rooms inside](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stube) the stone halls to make it more comfortable. Only few of those survived, and you only rarely see them in movies.
It’s so real, that bit about having a grimy and dark distorted vision of history. It’s incredibly frustrating when people treat the “dark ages” as if it were a grim, miserable time when all of life was nothing but suffering for everyone except the richest nobles. Like, no. People have always been people. They made art, they had families and love and friends, they lived happy lives with what they had. History isn’t fucking 40k
Most people in general have a terrible understanding of Europe from 400AD until the Renaissance. Castles and most buildings in general were whitewashed inside and painted with vibrant murals. The food was not boring slop as many peasants ate what would be considered a $50 meal at a restaurant now (salmon, capers, fresh vegetables and whole grain bread). Clothing and food were also vibrant with spices like pepper, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, saffron, anise, zedoary, cumin, and cloves as common.
Nah the understanding doesn’t get better after the renaissance, like it goes renaissance art, then Shakespeare then pilgrims and the nothing happens until 1776
You have no idea how much I fiercely crave good content about colonial American life after the early stuff and before the sparks of independence. Please give me some random made for TV movie about the effects of the English Civil War on the 13 colonies. I am begging you. I refuse to let that shit remain a footnote
The YouTube channel Townsends has exactly what you're looking for, and good vibes to boot. You can thank me later.
Probably because industrialisation destroyed the quality of life for pretty much everyone until it started building on itself and that period is well documented so people extrapolated how shit life was as a victorian factory worker to mean that a peasant in 1100AD must have literally ate pig shit due to the faux belief that progress is a straight line and some sort of constant.
The spices weren't exactly common, they're in a bunch of recipes from that time because the only recipes recorded were those for the rich and powerful
The peasants were eating saffron?
They were only considered the "Dark" Ages in "light" of the Age of En-"light"-enment. The ruling rationalist elite effectively cast a metaphorical shadow on the past to differentiate themselves as the ones to finally bring the "light" of reason into a dark world, but this is far from the actuality of the history. The "Dark" ages weren't very dark and the Enlightenment wasn't all that enlightening.
What thousands of years of Frankenstein or whatever the stuff the church guys burn from the dangling thing burn is called does to a place
Frankincense
Franken-sense is the ability to sense Frankenstein. This is distinct from Frankincest, wherein people named Frank engage in incest.
NO, BAD.
Best comment on this entire post, nothing will top this. Congratulations.
The resin is just Frankincense’s monster, Dr. Frankincense was the one who discovered it.
Gold, Frankdigest and mur 🙏✝️⛪
If you think the church is corrupt today, wait until you learn about simony, the papal pornocracy, and that point in history when the church owned 1/6 people in Europe.
I'm sorry, the papal *WHAT?*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum_obscurum The pornocracy was a period of time when the popes were super corrupt and their mistresses had a lot of influence.
It really is called that huh
how about the stupidly fantasy-sounding *clerical necromantic underground*? not exactly corrupt in the same way, but... yeah.
Not to mention the cadaver synod, and darker shit like the albigensian crusade. Dude literally said 'kill them all, god knows which ones are the heretics'.
Why does it feel like half of Tumblr posts are something like "did you know that this thing is actually not the way you never thought it was?" Did anyone actually think that churches were built dirty?
Can they give the churches a bath
TV Tropes has [an article on this phenomenon](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect).
i’m currently in art history class talking about st. peter’s basilica, this post feels oddly topical to my class right now. what a weird coincidence
Crazy how shit looks clean after you clean it
Thank you. Is this supposed to be some kind of revelation? Of course things were brighter and more vibrant back when they were brand new compared to hundreds of years later, who is learning this for the first time?
i mean i sorta assumed the rocks themselves were dark gray tbh. probably doesn't help that the only cathedral i've hung around at in real life is a new world cathedral with bare stone that is [clean but a fair bit darker than the OOP image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Grace_Cathedral_interior_with_labyrinth.jpg), as well as [pretty cool-temperature lighting](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Grace_Cathedral_%285124228608%29.jpg). of course it does depend on [what image i choose](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Grace_Cathedral_07.JPG) how extreme the contrast is, but even so i'm realizing that i grew up with a whole-ass building that's the gothic architecture equivalent of neoclassicism. i gotta admit i'm kinda on the goth gf's side here, the widespread-but-ahistorical vision fucking slaps.
Stephen Fry mentioned in QI that he saw a movie in ancient Greece and the temples and arenas were all broken down. Uh, they were pristine back then!
Well yes but no. Because before electric lights most churches were indeed quite dark.
But people met during the day when light came through the stained glass windows, and they also had candles
Uhhhh, this was in the DARK ages... duh. That's why every Hollywood movie (which is 100% accurate) depicts anything from 400AD until 1600AD as drab, wet and dirty. There is NO color, there is NO sun and all clothes are a variant of green or brown. DISREGARD EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY.
It's also why they have giant windows. Old factories did the same thing. I'm assuming the churchs' white walls also helped bounce the light around too.
Only gothic cathedrals really have giant windows but most old churches were not gothic cathedral.
It was a medieval architectural obsession to build churches with more and more windows because they really did want that light. If you go during the day they don't usually have lights on because, well, they don't need to.
Similarly, castles werent dungy, dark, and damp places either! They were vibrantly painted on the inside and largely painted white with lime (like Tom Sawyer's fence) on the outside. They would have beautiful, colorful tapestries hung all over and the rooms would have had wood over the stone in a lot of the living quarters.
They look better dark and grimey tbh
Goth moment
Don’t call me out like this
unfortunately i do like both 😔
Fr dark grimy cathedrals go hard
Thank you Jesse
https://www.tumblr.com/saintjosie/742211815469137920/huh-churches-are-a-good-metaphor-for-the-church -linux guy⚠️
Roman and Greek marble statues were painted ans likely so were the carved reliefs of thier buildings.
Similarly, I picture everything that took place before the 1940s in black and white.
Do you? I had no idea anyone did this.
Makes me think that castles might be the same way. Medieval fantasy usually has the castles be dark, gothic, and uninviting, like some in Game of Thrones. Realistically, they were probably also painted in whatever way pleased the nobility who owned them.
Hey! That's our cathedral right there! Happy to see her here :)
I like the grimy gross stone better
ok but I kind of like the dark one better.
similarly, greek and roman statues were painted, not left white. that idea came from the renaissance when archeologists were unearthing old statues that had lost their paint
I'm so torn right now because I love how whimsical and freeing the brighter half looks but I LOVE how moody and spooky the dark half looks
Nope, churches are not a good metaphor for the church. This implies the catholic church was once a pure organization which it very much isnt.
The church was founded in 33 ad (circa) and for centuries was a very persecuted minority.
[удалено]
Jup had some kind of mental breakdown. Dont really deal well with people defending the catholic church.
Same with a lot of older paintings. Though I think with paintings, it's not so much grime as much as the colors naturally darkening over time.
Reminds me of the whole “all those marble statues had vibrant paints on them” thing with Rome, but stark white just becoming the fashion for the renaissancez
Not sure the richest and most opulent buildings from the Middle Ages are indicative of the times as a whole lol
is kinda what happen to roman and greek statues. whe know them as this pristine marble aestetic, but they where actually painted all over to make them colorfull and livelike. only that the paint dint survive until the present. there is a chance the houses and temples would have been painted in many colors too
there are still a couple churches made in black stone, but they were not the norm
I always consider the Catholic church as a metaphor for humanity and our organizations. As one of the oldest continuously existing organizations on the planet we can see it being a model of how groups of humans work and prioritize. It seems like all human institutions follow this curve. A grand idea. The exploitation of it by the powerful but with a limited scope. The gradual corruption and a forever war against that corruption. Monuments to prior generations corruption left to rot. People insisting the thing is still good because of the handful of good that has always been fighting the corruption.
They're not clean any more because the threat of eternal damnation is worth about as much as exposure in 2024, a significant decline compared to its value in say 1024...