Roman Art and Architecture

E

Freestanding Sculpture

The same kinds of stone were used for freestanding statuary, although statues were produced in great numbers in bronze and even in gold and silver. Relatively few bronze and almost no gold and silver statues have survived because they were frequently melted down in the Middle Ages and later. Notable exceptions are the bronze equestrian statue (circa ad175) of Emperor Marcus Aurelius on the Campidoglio in Rome (spared only because it was thought to be of Constantine the Great), the gold bust (Musée Cantonal d’Archéologie et d’Histoire, Lausanne, Switzerland) of the same emperor from Avenches, Switzerland, and the silver bust (Museo di Antichità, Turin, Italy) of Lucius Aurelianus Verus, coemperor (ad161-169) with Marcus Aurelius.

Statues were erected of deities, heroes, and mortals alike in a wide variety of contexts. Every temple had a cult statue of the god or goddess to whom the temple was dedicated. Marble and bronze images of the gods and heroes—Roman originals and copies of famous Greek statues—were popular not only for public places such as baths, but for the atria, gardens, and pools of private houses and villas. Important civic buildings were likely to possess a portrait of the current emperor and sometimes those of his wife and children as well.

F

Portrait Sculpture

Roman portrait sculpture forms one of the great chapters in the history of ancient art. Surviving portraits vary in size from miniature busts to colossal statues such as that of Constantine the Great, placed in his basilica in the Roman Forum. A Roman tradition during the Republic was to have family members carry images of the deceased during the funeral procession. Recent studies have suggested that the depictions of wrinkled old men and women associated with funerary monuments are not actual likenesses of the deceased but rather are cultural statements about them. This tradition merged with the practice of commemorating statesmen and other notables by erecting their images in public places. In both instances, real-life images are subsumed by imbuing the representations with artistic conventions connoting an array of Republican virtues. Some scholars have further suggested that these images were sculpted by Greek artists whose inherent antipathy toward the Romans impelled them to exacerbate these conventions until images verged on caricature.

The concept of an image imbued with cultural, not individual, characteristics continued into the Roman Imperial Period, as the images of Augustus reveal. When Augustus died in ad 14 at the age of 76, his official portraits still presented him as a young man. Although his image was transformed several times during his life, none represented him as an aged monarch. Nevertheless, in time, images of Roman royalty became more representational.

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IV

Painting

Little survives today of Roman panel painting, the equivalent of modern paintings on canvas. But it is known from ancient literature that Roman painters treated a variety of subjects, including historical events, myths, scenes of daily life (see genre painting), portraits (see portraiture), and still lifes.

A

Portrait Painting

In the Roman Imperial Period, portrait painting is best represented by a series of wooden panels recovered from sites throughout Roman Egypt. These works, traditionally called Fayyum portraits, after the agricultural district in Egypt where they were first discovered, were painted in the encaustic technique, a method that uses pigment contained in a medium of hot wax. These panels are the only portraits that have survived in any number, and even though they are provincial works, they testify to a high level of accomplishment on the part of Roman painters. These images reflect the prevailing tastes of the times and provide a chronological overview of the development of portraiture during the Roman Imperial Period. One painted imperial portrait is preserved (Staatliche Museen, Berlin), depicting Lucius Septimius Severus, his wife, Julia Domna, and their sons, Caracalla and Geta. Geta’s head was removed after his damnatio memoriae (official condemnation).

B

Mural Painting

Mural painting is, by contrast, well documented, especially in Pompeii and the other cities buried in ad 79 by the eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius. Four so-called Pompeiian Styles have been distinguished.

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