Editing Greek Revival architecture (section)

==Polychromy==
{{See also|Polychrome}}
[[File:Tempio b hittorf.jpg|thumb|[[Jacques Ignace Hittorff|Hittorff]]'s reconstruction of Temple B in [[Selinunte]], Greece (1851)]]
The discovery that the Greeks had painted their temples influenced the later development of the style. The archaeological dig at [[Aegina]] and [[Bassae]] in 1811–1812 by Cockerell, [[Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (archaeologist)|Otto Magnus von Stackelberg]], and [[Carl Haller von Hallerstein]] had disinterred painted fragments of masonry daubed with impermanent colours. This revelation was a direct contradiction of [[Johann Joachim Winckelmann]]'s notion of the Greek temple as timeless, fixed, and pure in its whiteness.

In 1823, [[Samuel Angell]] discovered the coloured metopes of Temple C at [[Selinunte]], [[Sicily]] and published them in 1826. The French architect [[Jacques Ignace Hittorff]] witnessed the exhibition of Angell's find and endeavoured to excavate Temple B at Selinus. His imaginative reconstructions of this temple were exhibited in Rome and Paris in 1824 and he went on to publish these as ''{{lang|fr|Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs}}'' (1830) and later in ''{{lang|fr|Restitution du Temple d'Empedocle a Selinote}}'' (1851). The controversy was to inspire von Klenze's "Aegina" room at the Munich [[Glyptothek]] of 1830, the first of his many speculative reconstructions of Greek colour.

Hittorff lectured in [[Paris]] in 1829–1830 that Greek temples had originally been painted [[ochre]] yellow, with the moulding and sculptural details in red, blue, green and gold. While this may or may not have been the case with older wooden or plain stone temples, it was definitely not the case with the more luxurious [[marble]] temples, where colour was used sparingly to accentuate architectural highlights.

[[Henri Labrouste]] also proposed a reconstruction of the temples at Paestum to the {{lang|fr|[[Académie des Beaux-Arts]]|italic=no}} in 1829, decked out in startling colour, inverting the accepted chronology of the three Doric temples, thereby implying that the development of the Greek orders did not increase in formal complexity over time, i.e., the evolution from Doric to Corinthian was not inexorable. Both events were to cause a minor scandal. The emerging understanding that Greek art was subject to changing forces of environment and culture was a direct assault on the architectural rationalism of the day.