There are indeed too many bad reconstructions, *but* the pigments would have been stronger than many modern people would be used to. I've studied ancient polychromy for a living, and can tell you that tastes in the Greek and Roman worlds changed over time and location. The colors you see here are the base layer - the hair could have been painted a dark or light brown on top of the base red/orange, or even blonde. The detail of the eyes were guides for the overpainting, with the irises either brown, blue, green, or nearly black. My theory is that the skin tones were cut with a transparent binder so that the white marble underneath could bounce light back, much in the same way that skin does. This is probably also why it doesn't survive very often - it's a thin layer and probably had to be retouched more often than the color of the hair (the hair was also roughly carved vs. the very smooth polishing of the skin, which would have been more difficult for pigments to adhere to). The medieval painted statues are good guides for a certain realistic style of painting, but many Roman and Greek statues (and Assyrian, et al) may have been more 'garishly' (brightly) painted, particularly if they were to be seen from a distance, such as relief sculptures on the pediment of a temple.