ORIGINALS AND COPIES OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

ORIGINALS AND COPIES OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

The Romans admired Greek art, but used it in different ways. Contemporary scholarship has made much of the influence of the Greek legacy on Roman art, and this is a significant factor not only in sculpture but in painting and temple architecture. Artists from the Hellenistic world came to work in Rome, while Greek works of art were imported in vast numbers as the spoils of war. Roman patricians were very keen to acquire works of this kind. In the first centuries of Roman civilization, Hellenistic art alone was regarded as worthy of esteem and the superiority of the Greeks was overestimated. The Roman craftsman was thought to have difficulty in imitating Greek work and to be quite incapable of creating anything of equal merit. Many sources bear witness to debates of this kind among the intellectual elite, and to the high prices fetched by works of art imported as war booty. In 146 AD, for example, after the fall of Corinth, many statues were brought to Rome and some were even distributed to other Italian cities. The architect Hermodorus of Salamis and several famous sculptors arrived at about the same time.

Despite the influx of original Greek works and the presence of Greek artists in the two centuries before Christ, Roman art was nevertheless acquiring an identity of its own. This was already apparent in architecture. It is a fact that no Greek building was ever really dismantled and transported to Rome. And despite close observation of Greek models, evident in Vitruvius, Roman architectural categories, being essentially functional, were not the same.

In the field of sculpture, and especially statuary, the study of Greek works, during the Imperial period so particular, resulted in Roman sculptors adopting a threefold approach: interpretatio, imitatio, aemulatio. Indeed, in attempting to tease out the originality of Roman art, we must not forget that under the cuirass of the Augustus of Prima Porta lurks the Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) of Polyclitus (of which there are other replicas, in the best sense of the word, for instance at the Museo Nazionale in Naples) or that the Belvedere Apollo was inspired by Apollo the Archer from Asia Minor.

There are few Roman works modelled on Archaic masterpieces. The Webb head in the Brstish Museum, carved in the Flavian period, is a direct imitation pf the statue of the Athenean Tyrannicide Harmodios by Antenor, thus contradicting the view that no copies were made of statues dating from before the late sixth century BC. There are also a few korai and two torsos of ephebes in the Berlin and Boston Museums. But, on the whole, particularly between the first and third centuries AD, the Romans took as their models sculptures of the’ Classical period. Among these, it is possible to distinguish a number of categories: replicas, intended to be exact copies of famous Classical originals; works inspired by a single Classical model but modified to reflect contemporary taste; sculptures combining elements from a number of Classical models; and works which reproduce a given Classical style without reference to any specific model. Over and above Greek influences, we need to look for the truly Roman innovations in form that reflected changing tastes.

Where relief sculpture is concerned, Greek influence found a different mode of expression. Since the last century, it has been common to compare the Parthenon frieze depicting the Panathenaic procession with the friezes on the north and south walls of the Ara Pacis of Augustus. It

is true that the two processions have much in common, being arranged along the north and south walls of a religious building, each representing a contemporary religious procession. Both are carved in low relief against a neutral background that conveys a sense of solemnity. However, there are also fundamental differences between these two well-attested monuments, reflecting the widely divergent outlooks of the sculptors concerned, who worked in the fifth and first centuries BC respectively. Similarly, the Flavian fragments of the frieze of the theatre of Balbus in Rome appear to be a latter-thy version of the monumental frieze of the great altar of Zeus at Pergamon. A relief found in Modena leads us to reconsider Roman copies of the Niobid reliefs of the throne of Zeus at Olympus. The artists in these cases were not seeking so much to reproduce a model, however famous, as to reinterpret and create new compositions based on a stock of types. This is particularly evident if we consider sarcophagi, where Greek myths are recast to suit the circumstances, social background and requirements of the sponsor: it is not possible to give the same explanation for the choice of similar subjects when they occur in different settings. We shall return to this question when considering mythology and sarcophagi.

The copying and interpreting of models is a constant factor in art, and the influence of famous monuments can clarify the relationship between one work and another. The Arch of Trajan at Benevento is a painstaking copy of that of Titus, erected twenty or so years earlier in Rome, even in the details of ornamentation. The Maison Carree

in Nimes derives certain of its features from the slightly older temple of Apollo situated behind the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome. It thus illustrates the influence of metropolitan monuments on life in the provinces. Then there are mixtures which depend on the local history of a work. For instance, the famous military statue of M. Holconius Rufus at the Museo Nazionale in Naples, carved between 2 or 1 BC and 14 AD, must have suffered serious damage in an earthquake in 62 AD. In fact, so badly damaged was the head that it was totally replaced. Today, the statue of Holconius Rufus is a mixture, the face a copy made in the time of Nero or the early Flavians. We need to make distinctions when considering the issue of copies; in many cases, the imitation is more a question of the spirit of the work than of the actual details. This is made abundantly clear if we compare the head of the young man riding in a chariot in the Palazzo dei Conservatori with hat of the Apollo prominently displayed at the National museum in Athens