Roman art

Due to the vast geography of the Roman Empire, Roman art can be difficult to define precisely, but the genre broadly includes sculptures, wall paintings, and mosaics depicting mythological, historical, and religious themes as well as everyday life. The first Roman art dates to about 509 BCE, Throughout history, works of Roman art have sprung from vastly different trends and tastes, typically based on location within the empire. Setting Roman art apart as a genre are its diversity, eclectic nature, vast production, and widespread availability. The body of work that constitutes Roman art encompasses an array of media, including seal-cutting, coins, jewelry, glassware, pottery, frescoes, statues, and monuments. Landscapes, townscapes, and seascapes were prevalent, with realism generating great interest and representing the ideal. In the anthology of Roman artwork, busts of important ancestors and commissioned statues of historical leaders were especially popular.

The Romans championed art as a popular, affordable, and accessible way to express and communicate the human spirit. Roman art was made for both private Roman homes and the public domain. Elite homeowners often displayed their wealth, taste, and education through art, and because Roman homes were regularly visited and meant for viewing, their artistic adornment was paramount.

Having recycled Greek designs that they considered superior to their own, Roman sculptors and painters produced only limited pieces of fine art. While many Greek sculptors were esteemed throughout the Hellenistic world, most Roman artists were regarded as mere skilled tradespersons and have remained largely anonymous. Because so little is known about the early Roman artists, scholars do not even typically refer to specific artists.

Despite this anonymity, Roman art, like Greek art, still had a formative influence on the Renaissance and other artistic movements that followed. The Roman tradition of copying classical Greek sculptures helped shape the wider artistic world. Even with heavy Greek influences, Roman artists told a unique story through their work, one rich with history, politics, war, and culture. Roman urban architecture was considered ground-breaking, as were Roman landscape painting and portrait busts.

Background

Professor Martin Henig of Oxford University notes that the Romans originated in central Italy and were influenced by other Italian cultures however, once they came into contact with the Greeks in the fifth century, the Roman republic absorbed many aspects of Classical and Hellenistic Greek art. Roman art never lost its distinctive character. From about the first century BCE, the Roman Empire’s rapid expansion brought Graeco-Roman art to many parts of Europe, North Africa, and Asia.

Rome’s architectural legacy is particularly widespread and extends beyond the traditional Roman temple. Roman architecture adopted Hellenistic planning and employed new materials, such as brick and concrete, leading to structures such as the Thermae (Roman baths), the Pantheon, and the church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople.

In the broadest sense, Roman art covers one thousand years and traverses three continents. The city of Rome was a melting pot, and the Romans did not hesitate to adapt artistic influences from other Mediterranean cultures. Greek, Etruscan, and Egyptian influences are common throughout Roman art, though this does not mean all Roman art is derivative. One of the challenges for specialists is to define the “Roman” in Roman art.

According to tradition, the Roman Republic was founded in 509 BCE after the overthrowing of the last Etruscan king. During the Republican period, a time of turmoil and political upheaval in which Julius Caesar became a dictator, annually elected magistrates and the Senate governed the Romans. The purpose of Roman art from this time was to serve the state. Public sacrifices were depicted, and military campaigns were celebrated. Portraits reflected Republic virtues and goals, such as hard work, age, wisdom, community leadership, and military service. Roman public art during this period also commemorated important individuals, and, in the later years, brought vivid portraits of leading Romans.

Unlike the Greeks by whom they were influenced, Roman artists living in the Republic did not strive to represent ideal, youthful humans, but rather flawed, time-worn people who had given over their lives in service of that Republic. Not until the imperial age, which followed the Republican period, did Roman art depict younger, stronger leaders in classical Greek style. The imperial age marked the beginning of the Roman Empire. It began after Julius Caesar was assassinated with the rise of his adopted nephew, Octavius, also known as Caesar Augustus. Augustus became emperor of Rome in 27 BCE.

The Roman Empire survived for five more centuries until the Western Empire collapsed in 476 CE. Under the Empire, portrait busts of ancestors—as well as of the now all-powerful emperors – graced public and private buildings, and adaptations of famous Greek sculptures were common in houses, temples, baths, and theatres.

History would shift again near the end of the first century CE when Roman art began showing an Egyptian and Near Eastern influence, with far less idealized figures and looser proportions. During this time, Greek-influenced art reigned supreme and showcased smooth lines, ideal nude bodies, and balanced proportions. Works commissioned by Roman emperors, including portraits of the imperial family, filled the public sphere, along with arched columns that described war and policy victories as well as military life. Roman art began to glorify the ruler and his family during this era.

During the later imperial period, beginning in the late second century, Roman art shifted toward less natural, stiffer poses and squat proportions abounded, with important figures depicted as slightly larger than or above the rest of the crowd. Art during the reign of Emperor Constantine, who ruled from 306 to 337, further developed these elements, showing even squatter proportions and sending a clear message that Constantine was in charge.

Overview

Key art forms in the Roman empire were sculpture, especially in bronze, marble, stucco, and terra cotta; statues and monuments; wall paintings and mosaics; and a host of minor arts, such as jewelry, gems and cameos, silverware, seals, coins, glass vessels, and ornaments. Pottery, ivories, medallions, coins, and even lamps also can be considered among the category of minor Roman arts. Belying their given name, the minor arts held great importance in the materialistic Roman society, which saw the wealthy in competition to display gold jewelry, silver plate, and engraved gems.

Roman Sculpture

Roman sculpture intertwined realism with the idealized perfection of classical Greek sculpture. Bronze and marble were favored materials, though metal was not uncommon. One of the most famous pieces of Roman sculpture is the fully nude statue of Aphrodite, the Greek god of love, sexuality, and fertility. The original statue, carved by the sculptor Praxiteles in the fourth century BCE, often was used as a devotional image in a temple or shrine but popularly displayed in civic, domestic, and funerary contexts, as well as private gardens. In the gardens the form and associations with fertility were equated with vegetation growth and its resulting pleasure.

The most distinctive sculpture of the Roman period can be found on the empire’s borders, where native sculptors worked local limestones and sandstones into what is called the Metropolitan Roman style. Similarly, texturally rich are the funerary and religious sculptures from Palmyra in Syria. Portraits of women and men in native, non-Roman dress are especially distinctive.

Among the most notable sculptured pieces in Roman art history are The Orator (first century BCE), a life-size bronze statue of a man named Aule Metele wearing a magistrate’s toga and boots; Head of a Roman Patrician (75 to 50 BCE), a depiction of an unknown upper-class Roman citizen representing the ideals of the Roman Republic; and Augustus from Prima Porta(first century CE), which depicted the first emperor of Rome, who ordered about seventy portrait statues of himself. This marble statue was found in the ruins of the Villa of Livia and is now on display at the Vatican.

Other sculptures include the Roman masterpiece Trajan’s Column (110 CE), which also served as the tomb of Emperor Trajan, who commissioned it, and Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (176 CE), a bronze likeness of Marcus Aurelius riding his horse that has served as a model for most equestrian statues throughout European art history. Equestrian statues were common in ancient Rome as they honored military and civic achievements. Few survive intact because the Catholic Church destroyed many pagan statues in the Middle Ages. This particular statue was saved because of the mistaken belief that it represented Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome.

The Four Tetrarchs (300 CE), housed in Venice, is an often-overlooked sculpture and political statement made from porphyry, a rare, reddish-purple Egyptian rock meant to emphasize imperial power. The sculpture represents the Tetrarchy, the government Emperor Diocletian created to end the civil wars that beleaguered Rome. He divided the large empire in half and appointed an emperor and vice-emperor to each side, thereby creating the “rule of four.” In the sculpture, four similar figures are divided into pairs, with one bearded and one smooth-faced emperor each. The figures are not believed to represent particular rulers, but the power of the office itself. Because of its suppression of individual identity, the style can be described as early Christian.

Also in the sculpture realm, an important work depicting a woman was Fonseca Bust, from the second century CE. Portraits of elite Roman women were commissioned to emphasize female beauty and fashion and were therefore far less realistic than the renderings of men. The head full of curls on Fonseca Bust demonstrates the Roman fascination with elaborate hairstyles. Other similar period busts also depict women with ornate tendrils of hair.

The statues and monuments Roman citizens left behind chronicle hundreds of years of history and showcase how the ancient Romans combined military might with a commitment to public art. Roman art served as political propaganda and commemorated military and diplomatic feats.

Roman Painting

Paintings came heavily into play in both public and private Roman interiors, and demand for them was huge throughout the empire. Landscape paintings are considered among the greatest innovations of Roman painters, given the low level of Greek interest in the genre. Roman building interiors were often lavishly decorated as artists employed bold colors and designs. By the first century BCE, paintings, fresco, and stucco were all used in public buildings as well as private homes and in temples, tombs, and military structures across the Roman world.

Mass-produced panel paintings (the highest form of Roman painting), murals (typically seascapes or landscapes), and triumphal history paintings (frequently commissioned to highlight military successes) were the three most popular types of Roman painting.

A vast collection of ancient Roman paintings does not exist, but some of the most famous sites that left them behind include the Catacombs of Rome and the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose wall paintings were preserved when they were covered in ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

In ancient Rome, painting was one of the most diverse art forms used to depict various subjects. Many famous Roman paintings and images from artworks have been reproduced as contemporary Roman drawings and prints.

The first Roman painting style was the incrustation style, defined by colorful pigments and patchwork walls with images of faux marble linked to stucco molds to increase three-dimensionality. The style was created using a base coat of wall mortar that could be layered up to three times in thickness. The coating contained lime and either volcanic pozzolana or sand. After this, three more coats were added on top, but finely pulverized marble and lime were mixed in for a smooth finish. The next layer was glass and marble. While the surface remained wet, pigment was added, and this became known as a fresco.

The resort-like Villa of Livia, where Caesar Augustus’ wife lived, contains one of the most well-known fresco wall paintings in ancient Roman art history, The Painted Garden, now housed at the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome. The detailed garden landscape prominently features fauna, flora, and birds.

Other famous Roman frescoes included The Dionysiac Frieze, a fresco housed at Villa de Misteri, or Villa of Mysteries, in Pompeii; Perseus and Andromeda in Landscape, a fresco housed at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Polyphemus and Galatea in Landscape, also housed at the Met.

The Dionysiac Frieze, rendered in bold red, contains almost-life-size figures. The first scene depicts a woman carrying a tray, while other scenes include a reclining Dionysus and an aging Silenus. Another interpretation of the fresco is that this is a young woman preparing for womanhood by participating in a ceremonial marriage. The Dionysiac Frieze is an example of period style from between 20 and 79 CE defined by a less traditional approach involving large-scale paintings with narratives, panoramic vistas, and architectural details.

Perseus and Andromeda in Landscape features two mythological events inspired by the story of Perseus, who rescued Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. The monster is depicted with vivid blue-green hues and sharp teeth with a mouth wide open toward Andromeda, whose arms are outstretched in the middle of the fresco with one hand chained to a crag and the other resting on rocks. Perseus is on the left carrying a lyre and wearing winged shoes and a shoulder cloak. Andromeda’s father is to the right, indicating a successful marriage of Perseus and Andromeda.

Polyphemus and Galatea in Landscape also depicts a creature, this time the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, playing a pan flute, which was a popular instrument among shepherds at the time. Alongside him is the sea nymph Galatea, whom he loves. Another scene depicts an angry Polyphemus in pain, hurling a rock at a ship belonging to Odysseus, who blinded Polyphemus.

Apart from incrustation, the Romans used three other styles of wall paintings. The architectural style still used the imitation of marble blocks but increased illusionistic detail through architectural elements. This was known as trompe l'oeil. Paintings appeared three-dimensional with some areas appearing vividly real, and some walls also contained life-size figures, which enhanced the realism and three-dimensionality. The Dionysiac Frieze is an example of this style.

The ornate style also depicted architectural elements similar to the architectural style, but ornate painters employed more decorative motifs, often with monochromatic colors as well as images and scenes from Egypt.

The intricate style is often described as a combination of incrustation, architectural, and ornate styles. The subject matter tended toward natural landscapes and mythological themes and figures and included still lives.

The large majority of Roman wall paintings were discovered near Herculaneum and Pompeii, where Mount Vesuvius erupted. The area is now a prized archaeological site that contains much valuable information on the ancient civilization of Rome and its story-telling art.

The frescoes of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor also claim an important place in Roman art history. Boscoreale, just north of Pompeii, was an aristocratic hotspot. Synistor’s villa was located there and was constructed in the middle of the first century CE. Its decorated walls were created around 40 and 30 and indicate the owner’s taste for the antiquity of the frescoes.

Many of the surviving artworks showcase the architectural style of ancient Roman art and contain visual ambiguities as well as details resembling real architectural elements, including columns, pillars, and rustic masonry. Ordinary objects such as glass vases and tables also appeared on the ancient Roman wall paintings and appeared to protrude from the wall. The prevailing theory about that style is that the owner wished to impress his villa guests with such details.

Other Art

Roman art history cannot be recounted without referencing Roman mosaics, often considered quintessentially Roman. They actually originated in Greece, but were a common feature of private homes and public buildings across the Roman empire. Mosaics were made with small squares of marble, tile, glass, pottery, stone, or shells in an array of colors. Many were geometric in the manner of rugs and carpets. Popular subjects included mythology, gladiator contests, wild beast fights, sports, agriculture, hunting, food, religious scenes, flora and fauna, and the Roman people themselves. One of the most famous Roman mosaics is one from the House of the Faun, Pompeii, depicting Alexander the Great. Roman mosaics have beautified floors, vaults, columns, and fountains across the empire.

Religious and funerary art also were popular genres in Roman art history. Small devotional statuettes were incorporated into personal and family shrines and often commissioned for the upper classes. Ivory, wood, and terra cotta were favored materials.

As Rome turned from cremation to burial at the end of the first century, stone coffins, known as sarcophagi, were in demand. One of the most common types was Metropolitan Roman. Sarcophagi, typically decorated with sculpture, were carved. The most expensive versions were carved from marble, but others were made of stone or wood. In addition to many different depictions of the deceased, such as full-length sculptural portraits of the person reclining on a sofa, popular motifs included mythology, hunting scenes, and garlands of fruit and leaves. Sarcophagi became an important medium for Christian-Roman Art. Because death touched all levels of society, funerary art recorded the diverse experiences of those who lived in the Roman empire.

The range of Roman art is quite vast and remains difficult to classify in its diversity. However, its influence on the arts of the Renaissance and the Neo-Classical age as well as on modern times renders it familiar to modern people in almost every aspect.

While on the whole it can be said that Roman art was largely derivative, it also disseminated Roman values and demonstrated respect for Roman power. Classical Roman art has been immensely influential on the cultures that followed it, and its impact can be seen in revivalist movements such as Neoclassical architecture as well as in American architecture, specifically and notably in the United States Capitol Building.

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