WHITE OR COLORED?

[MeinPanzer]

But isn't a painting going to have shading on a figure regardless of whether it's a live figure or a statue anyway?

Not always. I was looking at some paintings of theatrical masks from pompeii. Some you can tell have a very stylized paint job. Others are painted realisticly. Also looking at statues in the paintings the two or 3 I noticed off hand were not painted at all but apeared to be just the natural bronze or painted a solid color.

Bronze statues would not have been painted. Only stone sculptures were painted, IIRC.

The colors of the recreations match what I mean as a base coat. For example the hair solid brown. Then they could have done something as simple as drybrushing a light tan over the brown to make the details stand out.

They could have, but this probably didn't match their aesthetic taste. They probably thought that the form itself provided enough shading.

And since we only have basicly a stain left you would have no way to tell about secoundary coats of paint as they would never touch the marble itself but only sit on the first layer of paint.

I think some of this would have shown up on larger sculpture such as the Alexander sarcophagus, which had intact detailed paint still surviving to be photographed in the late 19th century. It had no undercoat and no shading or highlighting.

And I am not saying all were done this way. But think about it they spend a fortune having a sculpture made perfectly life like then have someone with no more talent than a fence painter but on the paint?

Because, as I said, you are applying your modern aesthetic to these things. Many people wouldn't think of painting a stone building tons of gaudy solid colours either, but they thought it looked good.

I had that thought too, and then it occurred to me that what if future historians based their concept of the US Army (or any other for that matter) on Hollywood films they might uncover in some future "dig" -- gads what a mish-mash of information they would have.

The Great Tunic Debate, I fear, will remain just that for a long time to come.

I've thought about this as well, but the only real comparisons are with large scale official, usually urban, monuments like Trajan's column and such. Stelae, local monuments like the Adamklissi metopes and the Mainz reliefs, and other such "provincial" work would most likely have been done by craftsmen with a decent knowledge of military matters, or at least access to information on it.