Colourful beauty of Parthenon marbles revealed in scientific analysis

Innovative scanning techniques show painting of sculptures was potentially as intricate as their carving

Though the Parthenon marbles were admired for centuries for their stark white brilliance, it has long been known that the sculptures were originally brightly painted, before millennia of weathering, cannon bombardment, rough handling and overenthusiastic cleaning scoured them clean.

Evidence for the paintwork has been highly elusive, however, leading their former curator at the British Museum to confess that, after years of hunting in vain for traces of pigment, he had sometimes doubted they were painted at all.