Kore (sculpture)

[3] Some korai were painted colorfully to enhance the visual impact of the garments and for narrative purposes.

[11] They served their purpose as votive offerings to the patron goddess, Athena, on the Acropolis throughout the sixth and early fifth century BC.

However, in 480/479 BC, Persians attacked and desecrated the city of Athens including the Acropolis and many of its statues.

[12] Korai not only acted as an offering to a deity, but could be used to show off economic and social standing within a polis.

Korai demonstrated individual wealth and status because they were fairly expensive to create and limited to the upper class.

[7] Whether korai were given as votive offerings or grave markers, according to historian Robin Osborne, they were allegoric symbols as “tokens of exchange”.

[11] The "divinities" theory suggests that the korai represent goddesses, nymphs, and other types of female deities.

[12] The agalmata theory proposes that many korai are generic maidens who represent the Archaic ideal of female beauty.

Art historian Jeffery M. Hurwit suggests that the generic maidens were symbols for ideal beauty that embellished the sanctuaries and pleased the deities.

[16] Art historians debate whether the Peplos Kore is Artemis or the patron goddess of the Acropolis, Athena.

When the sculptor designed this kore, the marble was incised, creating a light relief of a pattern.

The more prestigious the use of color indicated a higher social position due to the high cost of dyes.

[4] Since the times of Michelangelo, it has been believed that ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were sculpted to be only white marble.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who pioneered the study of Greco-Roman art history in 1755, held the belief that color in ancient sculpture was inferior and spoiled the purely white marble.

Scientists and art historians counter this bias by providing evidence of visible remaining colors through microscopy and pigment analysis, ultraviolet fluorescence and reflection, and raking light.

[4] Vinzenz Brinkmann and his colleagues have been working to recreate the possible appearances of ancient sculptures in their original color.