Roman Art and Architecture

I

Introduction

Roman Art and Architecture, the art and architecture of ancient Rome and its empire, which at its height extended from the British Isles to the Caspian Sea. The earliest Roman art is generally associated with the overthrow of the Etruscan kings and the establishment of the Republic in 509 bc. The end of Roman art and the beginning of medieval art is usually said to occur with the conversion of the emperor Constantine the Great to Christianity and the transfer of the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople (present-day İstanbul) in ad 330. Roman styles and even pagan Roman subjects continued, however, for centuries, often in Christian guise (see Early Christian Art and Architecture).

Roman art is traditionally divided into two main periods, art of the Roman Republic and art of the Roman Empire (from 27 bc on), with subdivisions corresponding to the major emperors or to imperial dynasties. When the Republic was founded, the term Roman art was virtually synonymous with the art of the city of Rome, which still bore the stamp of its Etruscan past (Etruscan Civilization). Gradually, as the Roman Empire expanded throughout Italy and the Mediterranean and as the Romans became exposed to other artistic cultures, notably that of ancient Greece, Roman art shook off its dependence on Etruscan art; during the last two centuries before Christ a distinctive Roman manner of building, sculpting, and painting emerged.

Nevertheless, because of the extraordinary geographical extent of the Roman Empire and the number of diverse populations encompassed within its boundaries, the art and architecture of the Romans was always eclectic and is characterized by varying styles attributable to differing regional tastes and the diverse preferences of a wide range of patrons. Roman art is not just the art of the emperors, senators, and aristocracy, but of all the peoples of Rome’s vast empire, including middle-class business people, freedmen, slaves, and soldiers in Italy and the provinces.

Curiously, although examples of Roman sculptures, paintings, buildings (see architecture), and decorative arts survive in great numbers, few names of Roman artists and architects are recorded. In general, Roman monuments were designed to serve the needs of their patrons rather than to express the artistic temperaments of their makers.

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II

Architecture

A clear picture of Roman architecture can be drawn from the impressive remains of ancient Roman public and private buildings and from contemporaneous writings, such as De Architectura (trans. 1914), the ten-volume architectural treatise compiled by Vitruvius toward the close of the 1st century bc.

A

Roman City Planning

The typical Roman city of the later Republic and empire had a rectangular plan and resembled a Roman military camp with two main streets—the cardo (north-south) and the decumanus (east-west)—a grid of smaller streets dividing the town into blocks, and a wall circuit with gates. Older cities, such as Rome itself, founded before the adoption of regularized city planning, could, however, consist of a maze of crooked streets.

The focal point of the city was its forum, usually situated at the center of the city at the intersection of the cardo and the decumanus. The forum, an open area bordered by colonnades with shops, functioned as the chief meeting place of the town. It was also the site of the city’s primary religious and civic buildings, among them the Senate house, records office, and basilica.

The basilica was a roofed hall with a wide central area—the nave—flanked by side aisles, and it often had two or more stories. In Roman times basilicas were the site of business transactions and legal proceedings, but the building type was adapted in Christian times as the standard form of Western church with an apse and altar at the end of the long nave. The first basilicas were put up in the early 2nd century bc in Rome’s own Forum, but the earliest well-preserved example of the basilicas (circa 120 bc) is found at Pompeii.

B

Roman Temples

The chief temple of a Roman city, the capitolium, was generally located at one end of the forum. The standard Roman temple was a blend of Etruscan and Greek elements; rectangular in plan, it had a gabled roof, a deep porch with freestanding columns, and a frontal staircase giving access to its high plinth, or platform. The traditional Greek orders, or canons (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian), were usually retained, but the Romans also developed a new type of column capital called the composite capital, a mixture of Ionic and Corinthian elements. An excellent example of the canonical temple type is the Maison-Carrée (circa ad 4) in Nîmes, France.

Roman temples were erected not only in the forum, but throughout the city and in the countryside as well; many other types are known. One of the most influential in later times was the type used for the Pantheon (ad 118-28) in Rome, consisting of a standard gable-roofed columnar porch with a domed cylindrical drum behind it replacing the traditional rectangular main room, or cella. Simpler temples based on Greek prototypes, with round cellas and an encircling colonnade, such as that built about 75 bc at Tivoli, near Rome, were also popular.

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