The ancient Greeks painted their sculptures bright colours and adorned them with metal jewellery. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century CE, tells us that statues were coloured and polished. But it was not until the late nineteenth century that excavations on the Acropolis in Athens found several statues on which traces of colour could still be seen. The Peplos Kore is one of these.

Here the Kore is shown as she is today. A peplos is the type of dress she is wearing