Colors of Poseidon

What color would Poseidon's hair be? I have a classical depiction of Him, which means He's naked, so the only things I can paint are His hair and Sea symbols at the base of the statue.

Neptune-Ποσειδῶν is nearly always depicted with dark hair. One of his titles is Cyanochaetes/Κυανοχαίτης, which means 'cyan-haired'. In Greek, 'cyan' (κύανος) is used to refer to a wide range of blue to black shades. It is often used as the color of the sea water, or of a dark-colored horse's mane, although it can also refer, from the LSJ, to the blue color of tarnished copper, or that of the cornflower.

However, in Roman period mosaics and frescoes (almost the only source we have of color artwork from Antiquity), Neptune is sometimes portrayed as having white hair, being the Marine Jove. Indeed, many depictions show him as visually indistinguishable from Jove/Ζεύς, the only difference being that Neptune holds a bronze trident, whereas Jove holds either a royal staff (often topped with an image of Victory/Νίκη) or a thunderbolt. Actually, because these attributes of the images, especially with statues, have often gone missing over the centuries, it is often impossible to tell whether a statue represents one or the other.

For reference, I'm attaching the following mosaics depicting Neptune: one with dark hair, another with white hair (a beautiful and well-preserved mosaic, in which he is depicted alongside Venus).

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So if I were to simply paint His hair black, do you think that would be appropriate?

AgathonZante wrote:So if I were to simply paint His hair black, do you think that would be appropriate?

Absolutely.