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# Black patina on the Etruscan statue “Arringatore” in Florence found to be deliberate
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/bronzovaia-statuia-orator-arringatore-izobrazhaet-etrusskogo-muzhchinu-v-toge-s-podniatoi-rukoi/
- Published: 2026-10-19T07:39:53.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-19T07:50:12.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archaeology, Art, Museums, Science

The bronze statue "The Orator", the Arringatore, depicts an Etruscan man in a toga with a raised hand. It was found in 1567 at Pila, near Perugia, and is now kept in Florence. According to reports of the time, the statue was green when it was found. It was later believed that its dark surface had appeared as a result of the natural corrosion of copper.

But restorers have now removed the later brown coatings from the statue, and beneath them smooth, almost black areas have come to light on the face, hair, garment and hand. The researchers studied 15 samples of this black layer by means of microscopy, X-ray methods and spectroscopy, and many of the samples turned out to contain dark tenorite, a copper oxide, lying over a red layer of cuprite, another copper oxide.

The authors suggest that this patina was created deliberately some 2,200 years ago by heating the bronze. The researchers have not been able to reconstruct the method of heating itself. In other words, we are dealing with an antiquity that was aged from the very start