Roman Art and Architecture

III

Sculpture

Throughout the Roman world, statues and reliefs were regularly displayed in, on, and around public and private buildings. In fact, some Roman buildings were little more than monumental supports for sculpture.

A

Triumphal Arches

Chief among these are the honorary, or so-called triumphal, arches erected in all parts of the empire. Although almost none of the great statuary groups (often chariot groups) that once crowned these arches has survived, the original purpose of such monuments was solely to support honorific statuary; the arches were very plain. Under Augustus and succeeding emperors, however, the arches themselves became more and more elaborate. They eventually developed into veritable billboards covered with extensive series of relief panels advertising the victories and good deeds of the emperors. The reliefs often recounted specific historical events, but frequently allegorical scenes were also depicted in which an emperor might appear in the company of the gods or receive the homage of kneeling personifications of conquered peoples.

Among the most important preserved arches in the capital are the Arch of Titus (about ad 81), in the Roman Forum, and the Arch of Constantine (ad 315), near the Colosseum. In two panels on Titus’s arch the triumphal procession of the emperor is represented, complete with the spoils from the sack of the great temple in Jerusalem. The arch erected in honor of Constantine the Great presents a mixture of reliefs reused from earlier monuments and new reliefs made specifically for the arch. The panels and friezes depict a host of subjects, including scenes of battle, sacrifice, and the distribution of largess. In the reused reliefs the head of Constantine the Great was routinely substituted for those of his predecessors. Such reuse and refashioning of older reliefs was not uncommon in imperial Rome; the monuments of dead emperors who were officially condemned by the Senate (damnatio memoriae) were either altered or destroyed.

Richly decorated arches are also found outside Rome. At Benevento in southern Italy a grand arch with 14 panels honoring the emperor Trajan was put up about ad 114. At Orange in France, the Arch of Tiberius (ad 25) is covered with representations of military trophies and bound captives, scenes of Romans fighting Gauls, and panels of captured arms and armor.

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B

Honorific Columns and Altars

Historiated columns were also occasionally erected, with spiral relief friezes narrating in great detail the successful military campaigns of the Romans. The first and greatest of these was put up in the Forum of Trajan (ad 113) in Rome by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. It recounts the activities of the Roman army in its war against the Dacians (see Dacia) on the empire’s northern frontier (now part of Romania).

Historical reliefs also adorned great altars. The finest is the Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace, 13-9 bc, Rome), the reliefs of which celebrate the initiation by Augustus of the Pax Romana, the great era of Roman peace and prosperity.

C

Sculptural Styles

The style of the imperial relief sculptures ranges from the conscious neo-Greek classicism of the Ara Pacis friezes to the late antique—the schematic, frontal, and hieratic style of the new reliefs of the Arch of Constantine. On many monuments two or more styles may be seen side by side. As previously noted, throughout its history Roman art was eclectic, and no single period has a unified “Roman style.” In fact, the style of contemporary official and private monuments often differed markedly, as did that of coeval monuments in the capital and the provinces.

D

Funerary Reliefs

Private commissions for relief sculpture were usually in funerary contexts. Successful merchants such as the baker Eurysaces had their business activities immortalized on their tombs. During the late Republic and early empire, group portrait reliefs of freed slaves were frequently placed in the facades of their communal tombs; in the 1st and 2nd centuries ad portrait reliefs were popular for funerary altars set up in or around tombs.

The most important class of funerary reliefs, favored by the upper and middle classes alike from the mid-2nd century on, decorated the sarcophagi (coffins; literally, “flesh-eaters”; see Sarcophagus) produced in Rome and other major centers of the Mediterranean, including Athens and other cities of the Greek-speaking East. Many of the surviving sarcophagus reliefs are composed solely of garlands and other decorative motifs, but a great variety of narrative themes were also chosen. Mythological tales were especially popular, including the labors of Hercules, the Calydonian boar hunt of Meleager, and the legend of Niobe and her children. Often a portrait of the deceased was substituted for the head of the mythological hero or heroine. The sarcophagus reliefs were also sometimes pseudobiographical in nature, and a patron could choose from a repertoire of stock patterns for scenes of war, sacrifice, and marriage. The compositions of these scenes were frequently derived from imperial reliefs showing the emperor sacrificing to the state gods, receiving barbarian emissaries, and the like.

The preferred medium for Roman relief sculptures was white marble, but less costly varieties of limestone were also widely employed. Figural as well as decorative reliefs were generally painted, and colored stone was occasionally selected; for example, porphyry was favored in the 4th century, especially for imperial sarcophagi.

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