Since classical antiquity, Greek sculpture has occupied a premier position in the history of art. Pliny the Elder relied on earlier writers such as Xenokrates, Antigonos, and Pasiteles for his accounts of ancient Greek statues in marble and bronze, which appear in chapters of his Natural History devoted to stone and metals. Materials and techniques were of primary interest to Pliny, but his treatment—and those of many modern art historians until quite recently—nonetheless focused largely...