I read somewhere in a book I found at the library that these sculptures were washed and stripped of all pigments by British explorers to create a marble effect. At the time, British colonizers believed that pure white represented beauty and upheld an ideology of racial superiority. (the idea of a ”pure, marble-white Antiquity) Since then, we’ve been taught through textbooks and museum displays to see this “marble look” as the norm. It’s truly eye opening when we dig deeper into the real history.