The best was from naxos close grained and sparkling parian from paros with a rougher grain and more translucent and pentelic near athens more opaque and which turned a soft honey colour with age due to its iron content.
Why did the greeks use marble.
Marble was everywhere wood and other materials were not.
At all periods there were great numbers.
Gravestones statues and earth mounds were used to mark the grave and inscriptions were used to.
In the imperial roman period 31 bce 476 ad marble reproductions of bronze sculptures from greece became increasingly popular as rome s conquest of greece by the first century bc subjected roman artistic taste to the influence of greek style the british museum.
They used marble for some of them.
It was then pulled from its source with the help of pulleys winches levers and wooden beams.
Early greek sculpture was most often in bronze and porous limestone but whilst bronze seems never to have gone out of fashion the stone of choice would become marble.
The archaic from about 650 to 480 bc classical 480 323 and hellenistic.
Large works of the archaic period were more or less all made from stone.
However the process of mining marble was quite lengthy.
Architectural sculpture was mostly marble ie statues stuck to the sides of buildings.
The greeks and romans chose marble for their structures due its beauty.
Initially though wood would have been used for not only such basic architectural elements as columns but the entire buildings themselves.
Limestone undergoes a process of recrystallization due to extreme pressure or temperature change to become marble.
The sculpture of ancient greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient greek art as with the exception of painted ancient greek pottery almost no ancient greek painting survives.
Hammers and wedges were used to release marble from the earth.
The greeks certainly had a preference for marble at least for their public buildings.
Ancient greeks are believed to be the culture that first used inscribed marble to mark their graves.
Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone.
Early 8th century bce temples were so constructed and had thatch roofs.