leather cuirass

[MeinPanzer]

Avete,

I've been following the thread with some interest especially since it has digressed into the subject of color in Roman art.
Yes, there are examples of metalic objects (armor, helmets, shields) depicted with shades of a single color
to represent glares and shadows. Here's a splendid example from Santa Maggiore in Rome :



Depending on the century the Romans and Byzantines could be quite sucessful in creating the illusion of three dimensional
figures using color variations to represent light and shadow.

~Theo

It is well known that the Greeks and the Romans were capable of depicting reflections on metals probably from about the 4th c. BC. However, one point must be demonstrated in this case for such an argument to be of any validity: it must be shown that Graeco-Roman painters employed any such shading and gradation of colours on small-scale three-dimensional objects, like this cinerary sarcophagus and terracotta figurines. All the actual examples of polychromy I have seen on terracotta figurines and such sarcophagi have been fairly crude and without any attempt at shading.