Romans Mediterranean Art 500 Bce to 500 Ce Artifacts

Roman Art and Compages

Revd Professor Martin Henig MA, DPhil, DLitt, FSA; Member, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, and Honorary Visiting Professor at the Institute of Archæology, University College London

View from Coliseum showing Arch of Constantine, Palatine Colina, Arch of Titus, Nero's Temple, etc., Rome (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Partition); photo credit: Moffett Studio, 1909

The Romans originated in cardinal Italian republic, influenced by other local Italian cultures, notably those of Etruria, but from the 5th century they came into contact with the Greeks and from then onwards, the Roman republic absorbed many aspects of offset Classical and then Hellenistic art. However it never lost its distinctive character, especially notable in such fields equally architecture, portraiture, and historical relief. From almost the 1st century BC, the rapid expansion of the Roman Empire brought Graeco-Roman fine art to many parts of Europe, North Africa and nearer Asia assuasive the evolution of myriad provincial arts, ranging eventually from Northern Britain to the Sahara and from Spain to Arabia.

The architectural legacy of Rome is especially widespread. Across the traditional nature of the Roman temple, characterised by its high podium with prominent entrance at one finish simply, Roman architecture is characterised past its set up adoption of Hellenistic planning and a daring use of new materials, such as brick and especially concrete leading to the stupendous structures such as the great Thermae of Rome and indeed in the provinces, the Pantheon in Rome, and ultimately Justinian's church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople.

Marble portrait of the emperor Caracalla, marble, h. 362 mm, Roman, c. 212–217 Advertizing (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Samuel D. Lee Fund, 1940, Accession ID: forty.xi.1a); image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A fundamental attribute of Roman public art was the celebration of important individuals, and the later Republic is a period of striking portraits of leading Romans, partly following native veristic traditions of portraiture and partly influenced by Hellenistic interest in physiognomy. Nether the Empire, portrait busts of ancestors—too as of the now all-powerful emperors—graced buildings both public and private. Copies and adaptations of famous Greek sculptures were also numerous in houses, temples, baths, and theatres, and they were designed to provide a frisson of culture to what were brash and sometimes vulgar displays of power and wealth. Under the Empire in particular, reliefs depicting the achievements of the Emperors graced commemorative arches (such as the Arch of Titus) and columns (notably Trajan's Column), providing a sort of visual counterpart to the literary accounts of historians. These aspects of commemoration can be seen on a miniature calibration on the plentiful and beautiful Roman coinage, where many of the best portraits can exist seen, likewise as a broad range of imagery, both divine and documentary.

Right: Didrachm of Rome, argent, 7.41 gm, 7:00, 18.5 mm, Roman, c. 300–280 BC (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, Ruth Elizabeth White Fund, accession ID 2011.eighty.one); image © Yale University Art Gallery. Left: Sarcophagus depicting the triumph of Dionysos and the seasons, Phrygian marble, overall: 34 x 85 x 36 one/iv in. (86.four x 215.9 x 92.1 cm), ca. Advertising 260–270 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1955, Accretion ID:55.xi.5); photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Much of the nearly distinctive sculpture of the Roman period is constitute on the peripheries of the Empire where native sculptors worked local limestones and sandstones in what approximated to Metropolitan Roman style. The sculpture produced in the Trier region and elsewhere in Northern Gaul and in the Cotswold region of Great britain is lively and uninhibited, characterised by a pleasing fluidity of style which is paralleled by work of a not unlike quality produced by sculptors who employed the same soft and malleable stones in the Middle Ages. Similarly rich in texture but more hieratic in form are the funerary and religious sculptures from Palmyra in Syria. Particularly distinctive are portraits of women and men conspicuously wearing native, non-Roman apparel.

Correct: Wall painting from Room F of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, fresco, 73 ane/2 x 73 one/2in. (186.vii x 186.7cm) , Roman, Tardily Republican, c. l–twoscore B.C. (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, Rogers Fund, 1903, Accretion ID: 03.14.5); image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Left: Wall painting from Room F of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, fresco, h. 76 in. (193.04 cm.) width 44-iii/four in. (113.vii cm.), Roman, Late Republican, c. l–40 B.C. (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1903, Accession ID: 03.fourteen.12); image © The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art

Roman interiors were lavishly painted and stuccoed. For the 1st century BC and 1st century Advertisement, the largest body of evidence comes from the Campanian cities and suburban villas destroyed past the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in Advertizing 79 (for example, Pompeii and Herculaneum). 4 'styles' accept been distinguished, the commencement based on rendering panels of coloured marble in painted simulated, the 2nd opening up the wall to illusionistic mythological or landscape painting, and the later styles adding more decorative and imaginative motifs to emphasise the artifice of the project. In fact the first two styles in particular were taken from the Hellenistic world, as can be shown by comparison Campanian work with paintings from Hellenistic palaces and tombs. Nevertheless, when taken individually, such exquisite works of fine art as the garden paintings from Livia's firm at Prima Porta exterior Rome and the fantasy conceits which ornamented Nero's Golden House evidence considerable originality. Moreover, painting continued to develop in the Mediterranean world and in the provinces, where archæology continues to increase our cognition of later Roman painting. Paintings from the Roman catacombs (Christian, Jewish and pagan), the Constantinian ceiling paintings from Trier, and the row of Christian praying figures (orantes) from the villa at Lullingstone, Kent in England demonstrate a tendency for figurative paintings to become more formal and anticipatory of Byzantine icons.

Mosaic Fragment with a Dionysiac Procession, mosaic: limestone and drinking glass tesserae, late 2d–early third century Advertizing, 67.3 10 67.9 cm (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, Ruth Elizabeth White Fund, accretion ID 2004.2.2); image © Yale University Art Gallery

Mosaics are oftentimes regarded equally quintessentially Roman, but they too originated in Hellenic republic and particularly the Hellenistic world. Many Roman mosaics are geometric in the manner of rugs and carpets, merely a vast range of figurative subjects were produced, ranging from mythological and religious scenes to landscape and marine mosaics to scenes of gladiatorial combat and wild creature fights. Different styles and workshops and differences in repertoire are recognisable throughout the Empire. In N Africa for case we find many realistic representations of the Roman arena, while in Greece and U.k. such scenes are largely eschewed in favour of mythology. The early 4th century mosaic of the Great Hunt at Piazza Armerina in Sicily is a technically superb mosaic depicting violent conflict between beast and beast and human being and man, while the contemporary and as imposing mosaic at Woodchester, Gloucestershire, England is far more vibrant in terms of blueprint and in the imaginative stylisation of animals which circle peacefully around Orpheus only maybe lacks the technical finesse of the Sicilian mosaic.

The so-called minor arts were of great importance in the highly acquisitive Roman social club. The rich vied with each other in displays of gold jewellery and services of silver plate, which became always more impressive in the late Roman period. Engraved gems were caused from the known world, including sapphires and emeralds from Republic of india, stone crystal from the Alps, and bister from the Baltic. Hard stones were carved equally intaglios to serve equally seals or as cameos. Some of these were signed by famous artists such every bit Dioskourides, who is known to have carved the emperor Augustus' signet ring. Softer stones such equally amber and fluorspar were fashioned into the form of small vessels.

Correct: Chugalug with coins from Constas to Theodosius I, gold, enamel, sapphire, emerald, garnet, and glass, Roman Empire, c. 385-400 AD, length. 79.1 cm (The J. Paul Getty Museum, object number 83.AM.224) Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open up Content Program. Left: Spouted Jar with Satyr Heads, gilt silver, Roman Empire, c. 4th - 5th century Advert, H: 37.9 x Diam.: 27.5 cm (The J. Paul Getty Museum, object number 92.AM.12) Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program/font>

The range of Roman art is vast, and its diversity renders information technology hard to allocate. Merely its influence on the arts of the Renaissance and the Neo-Classical age and thus of our ain time renders it strangely familiar to united states of america in nigh if not all its aspects.

Further reading in Grove

Subject field essays

Ancient Rome

• Introduction
• Architecture
• Planning
• Sculpture
• Painting
• Mosaics
• Stucco
• Drinking glass
• Metalwork
• Other arts
• Collections, museums, and exhibitions

Rome

• Forum Romanum
• Imperial Fora
• Palatine
• Ara Pacis
• Domus Aurea
• Colosseum
• Trajan'due south Column
• Pantheon
• Castel Sant'Angelo
• Baths of Caracalla
• Basilica of Maxentius
• Curvation of Constantine
• Catacombs
• Villa of Maxentius

• Architectural Orders
• Ancient Near East
• Baths: Ancient Hellenic republic and Rome
• Bust: Ancient Origins
• Classical Dress: Rome
• Concrete: Ancient
• Dome, History: Origins
• Early Christian and Byzantine Art
• Façade Decoration, Sculpture: Ancient Greece and Aboriginal Rome
• Gardens: Ancient Rome
• Gem Engraving: Roman
• Herculaneum
• Istanbul
• Italian republic
• Landscape Painting: Classical
• Laokoon
• Belatedly Antiquity
• Military Architecture and Fortification: Rome
• Mosaic: Aboriginal Rome
• Narrative Fine art: Greece and Rome
• Ornament and Pattern: Ancient Rome
• Palace: Rome
• Pediment: Rome
• Pompeii
• Relief sculpture: Aboriginal Rome
• Sarcophagus: Roman Empire
• Stele: Greece and Rome
• Still-life: Classical World
• Temple: Rome
• Theatre, Classical World: Rome
• Tomb: Italy and the Roman Empire
• Triumphal Arch: Rome
• Villa: Roman

Biographies

Rulers and Patrons

• Augustus
• Agrippa
• Tiberius
• Claudius
• Nero
• Titus
• Domitian
• Trajan
• Hadrian
• Antinous
• Antoninus Pius
• Marcus Aurelius
• Septimius Severus
• Diocletian
• Constantine the Swell
• Theodosios I
• Galla Placidia
• Julius Caesar
• Justinian I

Artists, Architects, and Writers

• Apollodoros of Damascus
• Arkesilaos
• Cicero
• Cossutius
• Dioskourides
• Hagesandros, Polydoros and Athenodoros
• Pasiteles
• Pliny
• Plutarch
• Rabirius
• Vitruvius

Internet resources

Detect more images and information through these links, selected by the author and Oxford Art Online editors.

General resources

• Greek and Roman Art in the Ancient Globe [thematic essays in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Fine art History]
• Smarthistory: Aboriginal Rome [online educational resources with essays and multimedia content on ancient Rome]
• Art and Archaeology in the Perseus Digital Library [chief and secondary sources for the study of aboriginal Greece and Rome catalogue, including catalogue of objects, sites, and buildings]
• Digital Roman Forum [digital model of the Roman Forum as it appeared in belatedly antiquity created by the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory]
• Rome Reborn [3D digital models illustrating the urban development of Aboriginal Rome]
• Sample programme of a Roman Business firm [floor programme created past Barbara F. McManus]
• Ara Pacis Augustae [comprehensive body of images of the Ara Pacis]
• LacusCurtius [site on Roman artifact, including source texts and secondary literature]
• IMAGO [the Roman Society'south online paradigm bank developed from the slide collection at the Society'southward library]

Select journals available online

• Journal of Roman Archaeology
• Periodical of Roman Studies
• Journal of Hellenic Studies
• American Journal of Archaeology

Select museum collections online

• The British Museum
• The Louvre
• The Country Hermitage Museum
• Metropolitan Museum of Fine art
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Walters Art Museum
• The Brooklyn Museum
• University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology
• J. Paul Getty Museum
• Roman museums in the Google Art Project

Back to all Subject Guides

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Source: https://www.oxfordartonline.com/page/roman-art-and-architecture

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