The Capital Of Roman Sculpture
Saturday, August 28, 2010 at 10:56 PM | 0 comments  

THE CAPITAL OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

Given that Roman civilization was essentially urban, architectural sculpture was the bread and butter of the specialized stone—cutting workshops active in most towns of the Empire. Buildings were decorated with geometrical and foliage patterns carved in the stonework of friezes, entablatures, cornices and capitals. The latter were used to crown columns and pillars and bear the weight of architrave or springer. A capital consisted of a cushion (the echinus) surmounted by a plain or decorated block of greater or lesser thickness (the abacus) and was linked to the shaft of the column below by a number of mouldings. It was the member that most readily distinguished the architectural orders, even more so than the column or entablature. The Romans continued to use the three types of Greek capital — Done, Ionic and Corinthian and created the Tuscan, which had a fillet above the abacus and an astragal, or smooth moulding, round the neck of the column on which it sat. The composite capital was a mixture of the Ionic and Corinthian, sometimes decorated with winged victories or eagles. This type was probably developed in the time of Augustus, and the most elaborate examples so Rome itself are those gracing the Arch of Titus; the capitals of the Colosseum are probably not original. The fact that these capitals have two registers of acanthus leaves shows the predominance of the Corinthian order. In Southern Italy, the end of the Republican era, around 30 BC, seems the most propitious moment for the invention of these capitals. At Pompeii, the capitals of the great palaestra or the house of Octavius Quartio are proof of experimentation in this direction.

Whilst drawing inspiration from their Greek heritage, the Romans rethought it completely. In the area of decorative sculpture, the Corinthian order was the most widely used. The oldest building with Corinthian columns on the exterior is the monument to Lysicrates in Athens, which dates from around BC. But the history of the Corinthian capital as a form dates back even further, probably to the late fifth century. Hellenistic architects often hesitated to use Corinthian capitals in conjunction with the Ionic or Done orders. But despite its ancient history, the Corinthian was the preferred Roman order. The buildings now accepted as the starting point of Roman Corinthian date from the period between the death of Julius Caesar and approximately 25 BC. Three of these structures are widely known for their architectural features: the temple to Julius Caesar in the Roman Forum (42—29 BC), the Regia restored by Domitius Calvinus around 36 BC, and the Augustan Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, begun in 36 and dedicated in 28 BC. The first and third of these are Corinthian buildings with well- preserved capitals. The entablature of the Regia consisted of au architrave divided into two horizontal bands and crowned with a plain moulding. The continuous frieze was decorated with garlanded ox-skulls or bucrania. The cornice had dentils and modillions below the corona, while the flat surfaces between the modillions were decorated with low-relief floral motifs. A fourth building, the Temple of Saturn (about 20 BC), should be mentioned as well in this context, as it was almost certainly Corinthian in style when built. In all these buildings, the presence of modillions arranged at regular intervals below a projecting corona is an essential feature, hallmark of the origins of Roman Corinthian. The history of architectural decoration after the Battle of Actium (31 BC) and throughout the Augustan period is marked by a departure from the purity of the Classical orders and a taste for opulence and variety of detail. This light-hearted approach signalled the beginnings of the Roman style, as witnessed by the triumphal arch at Rimini, erected on the Via Flaminia in 27 BC. Of the different types of Roman capital, those sculpted with human figures are highly characteristic. Their origins can be traced back to Classical and Hellenistic Greece, and they became extremely popular in Southern Italy in the fourth century BC. They were subsequently taken up by Roman artists and produced in a great variety of forms: as portrait—bases in Provence, sculpted with the foreparts of animals (pro- tomes) in the Temple of Mars Ultor, and carved with continuous reliefs in the so—called Antonine baths in Carthage. Some of these capitals are of the highest quality, deserving of a place alongside statues and reliefs in the history of Roman sculpture. The capital in the Pigna Courtyard in the Vatican comes from the city baths built by Severus Alexander around 227 AD. It is carved with sporting scenes featuring a boxer, a gymnast and others.

During Late Antiquity, the capital underwent a transformation, in common with other elements of architectural decoration. The Theodosian capital is composite, with a double row of eight spiny acanthus leaves and, above, between the volutes, a row of upright leaves with five lobes replacing the Classical ovolo design. Below is a wreath of oblique spiny acanthus. This model was certainly created in the workshops of Constantinople and is the precursor of the various types of Byzantine capital. In some cases, their Christian character is indicated by the symbol of a cross.

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Sculptors And Patrons Of Roman Sculpture
Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 7:59 PM | 0 comments  

SCULPTORS AND PATRONS OF ROMAN SCULPTURE


In most cases, the names of those who sponsored the great works of Roman sculpture are known only from surviving inscriptions. Under the Republic, the Roman oligarchy honoured its most eminent members, and accepted similar honours from its dependents. At that time, statues were erected by the Senate to publicize the deeds of great men and promote their success. They were dedicated exclusively to magistrates, either by the Senate or by provincial towns and communities outside Rome. Although this continued in Imperial times, it was the Emperor who emerged as the principal patron. Within the imperial entourage, the circle of patrons might extend to the chief office holders of the city. In the private domain, portraits or reliefs of a funerary or religious nature were a matter of individual taste and wealth.

Most of the great works of Roman sculpture are anonymous, since the names of their authors have not been preserved. But this does not mean that the artists were unknown to their contemporaries. It is not surprising that the emperor and members of his entourage engaged the most renowned artists, and that such masters could command high prices, far higher than those paid to less skilful colleagues. Phny the Elder, referring in his .Natural History to the sculptor of the cult statue of Venus Geoetrix, which stood in the temple in Caesar’s Forum,

quotes Varro as saying that Arcesilaus was paid far more for his clay model than other sculptors normally received for a finished work. The prestige of a work of art was often measured in terms of its price. For instance, the Felicitas made by Arcesilaus for Lucius Lucullus cost one million sestertii, while Zenodorus was paid forty million for the colossal statue of Mercury that he undertook for the Arvernes of Gaul. The cost of the work was dictated by a market which was to a great extent made up of Greek imports. Thus, Cicero commissioned his friend Atticus to buy statues for a gymnasium on his behalf and, on another occasion, having purchased some Maenads, complained to his dealer, Fabius Callus, that he could not find a suitable place for them in his house.

In Roman society, artists or craftsmen might occupy different rungs on the social ladder, but craftsmen were not generally highly regarded. Lucian, writing in the second century AD, sets out the negative aspects of certain manual activities: “If you become a sculptor, you will be no more than a workman, tiring yourself physically, receiving only a meagre wage, (...) a common labourer, a man lost in the crowd, bowing and scraping to the rich, humble servant of the eloquent, living like a hare and destined to become the prey of the strong. Even if you were a Phidias or a Polyclitus and created a thousand masterpieces, it is your art that would be praised and, of those who admired your work, there would not be one, if he had any common sense, who would wish to take your place. Skilful as you might be you would always be regarded as an artisan, a mere mechanical, a man living by the work of his hands.” A first-century funerary altar so the Vatican Museum shows a sculptor at work. He is dcpicted seated, working on a funerary bust in a clipeus. A stele found ar Bordeaux shows a local sculptor sitting on a bench, wearing a smock and a skullcap, a hammer in his right hand and a chisel in his left. His name is Amandus and he is carving a stele in memory of his brother and fellow—sculptor Amabilis. The scene bears witness to a crafts— manes pride in his workmanship, which he considered worthy to feature on their tomb. Another stele, in the municipal museum of Urbino, shows sculptors engaged in carving sarcophagi. Such groups of craftsmen would set up workshops on the outskirts of towns, close to the burial grounds.

Signatures on works of sculpture are open to interpretation. Do they refer to the patron, the sculptor or the workshop involved? A workshop was a collective enterprise, whether its end products were statues, reliefs or sarcophagi. From roughing out to finishing, the stages of manufacture varied according to the nature and scale of the work, and of course colour was applied to fully completed and polished works and to unfinished decorative pieces. Division of labour was the rule, and the painter was an essential collaborator. The nature of the raw material was undoubtedly the most important variable: the organization of the work and the ultimate sale price would depend on whether a common local stone were used or an imported material requiring special treatment, such as marble. The work of the sculptor varied greatly: from mass production of statues and sarcophagi, where the distinctive features of the human figure were left undefined until the work was actually sold, to precise orders to a workshop or individual sculptor specifying iconographical features and symbolic requirements. Collaboration is evident when different styles can be detected in the same piece of work. Sculptors might also be asked to readapt earlier works to the taste of a new owner, update the iconography or style of a work, transform a public sculpture to meet the requirements of a new ruler, or maintain works offered to the state. In the case of sarcophagi, for instance, it is evident that the portrait was often sculpted a long rime after the reliefs.

There are also portraits and busts whose features and other details have been reworked in order to change their identity. Those of Nero, for instance, in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, were reworked into portraits of Vespasian (69—79 AD) after Nero’s fall from grace and damnatio memoriae de facto. There are many examples of this practice. A head of Trajan at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow was carved from an older fragment of a man wearing a toga. Another instance is the colossal statue of Severus Alexander, adapted from a statue of Elagabalus following the latter’s damoatio memoriae. Resemblances between works geographically remote from one another, for instance the portrait of Hermes in Munich and a head kept in the Thessalonica Museum, may be explained by the circulation of models, or by the fact that sculptors tended to bring earlier portraits into line with new official directives.

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Religion And Politics Of Roman Sculpture
Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 7:56 PM | 0 comments  

RELIGION AND POLITICS OF ROMAN SCULPTURE


In Roman thinking, harmony in human affairs depended on concord between the gods and men and was achieved by the performance of religious rites, of which the most important were solemn offerings. Religion and spiritual aspirations were often the inspiration of Roman art. Reliefs relating to the cult of a god were very common, for instance, particularly in imperial times. This was partly because they were less expensive to produce than sculptures in the round, partly because they were better suited to narrating the legends associated with the god and could be combined with symbolic or secondary motifs. In the general quest for a higher, transcendent realm, Roman art developed its own architectural models, which differ from Greek antecedents in a feeling for space, larger dimensions, illusionistic decoration, lack of feeling for sculptural detail and the importance ascribed to the façade. Masters of the world following the Punic Wars, and seen as favoured by the gods, the Romans sought to create an art corresponding to their god-given vocation. Having glorified the gods and goddesses of eternal life and love — Venus, Diana and Bacchus — they went on to exalt the emperor as bringer of salvation. It would, of course, be inappropriate to see all Roman art as having a sacred function, but it is evident that the allegorical representation of a transcendent world is a frequent aspect of it. Sarcophagi bespeak the aspiration of the Roman soul, and the symbolic value of the scenes they depict helps explain the changes made by the Romans to the Greek myths.

Even portraiture exhibits a religious approach to life: in the third century, for example, the new way of representing the eyes indicates a change in the relationship between the individual and the gods.

Through sculpture, it is also possible to study the penetration of foreign cults into the Empire: the worship of Egyptian divinities introduced from Alexandria in the last two centuries before Christ and the mystery religions, particularly that of Mithras. Deriving from oriental prototypes in which the god is associated with a bull, Mithras was ofren depicted in reliefs of various kinds. The one in the Louvre, originally from Fiano Romano, shows the banquet of Mithras and the Sun, before a cylindrical altar with an undulating snake. The carcass of the bull is laid out in front of them. But not all such monuments illustrate the same text or doctrine, even when they are inspired by a known myth. Modes of representation vary according to tradition, region and period.
Religious observance could be public or private, and the State religion was propagated by the ritually ordained layout of the city itself. Sacrifice was one of the basic religious practices: ritual sacrifices performed on fixed days, sacrifices of an expiatory or propitiatory nature, and thanksgivings. They might involve the death of animals, or a modest libation. Rich and poor alike solemnly performed these rites, advertising the fact within their family circle and the public at large. The ceremonies were frequently marked by the kind of processions shown on Roman reliefs. The altar in the vestibule of the Vatican Belvedere expresses the dynastic programme of Augustus, with the apotheosis of Caesar, or more probably Agrippa, which prefigures his own, Victory bearing a shield, and Augustus himself delivering the Latin to the magistri. Another altar in the Vatican Museum, which includes female subjects, illustrates the social policy of the Emperor, who sought to involve all groups in acclaiming different aspects of the State.

In the Roman world, a multitude of altars were set up in honour of emperors, in addition to those dedicated to the Lares and those associated with the worship of gods. Any study of sculpted altars must take into account the differences between cult altars and votive pillars, altars dedicated to gods and those used to invoke the divinities for funerary purposes. Votive altars are themselves an offering and are often simple in their decoration. From art of the most official kind (Ara Pacis, Arch of Titus, statues of emperors as gods) to the most private and varied manifestations of faith (Source of the Seine and Mont Sacon sanctuaries) and the many statues of gods remarkable fur their original form or a particular private interpretation, religion and the use made of it by those in power was undoubtedly the driving force behind Roman art, albeit with many variations.

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The Historical Relief Of Roman Art
Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 8:53 AM | 0 comments  



THE HISTORICAL RELIEF OF ROMAN ART

From the beginning .of the first century BC, reliefs carved in stone or marble, together with paintings, were adopted as a means of expressing dominant ideological tendencies.The politico-religious doctrines on which Sulla established his power were expressed in the frieze in Via della Consolazione, with its weapons and trophies. Towards the middle of the century, scenes of contemporary political life, together with nautical subjects, featured on the base of an altar which stood on the Campus Martius, near the Circus Flaminius. A generation later, the glory of Augustus was celebrated in epic form in the reliefs of the Ara Pacis, while, some years earlier, Cartilius Publieola had commissioned scenes of his military exploits for his tomb at Ostia. At Glanum and elsewhere, low- relief replaced mural painting as the means of representing the stage-by-stage development of an event, with ,the successive episodes juxtaposed like the frames of a cartoon. It is true that legendary episodes had already been illustrated in this way on the altar of Zeus at Pergamon, but continuous narrative had generally been the preserve of painting, in the home, on tombs and in certain public settings.

The Odyssey frieze in the Vatican Library, the frescoes of the Esquiline columbarium narrating the origins of Rome, or the mural painting of the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, may he cited as examples.

The creation of sculpted reliefs depicting a continuous story and a taste for historical narrative arc the two key elements in the new Roman artistic tradition, which was as much an expression of Empire as a way of iconographically justifying the imperial succession. Continuous historical narrative was not without precedent in Creek art, as the roots of Hellenistic triumphal art can be traced back to the fifth century BC in the western regions of Asia Minor. The two chief innovations destined to provide a setting for Roman historical relief were the historiated column and the triumphal arch. The Greeks had made use of the votive column, but when the triumphal column first appeared in Rome in the third century BC, it was a monument in its own right and therefore fitted to become, under the Empire, a support for decoration on a grand scale. Trajan’s Column is both a celebratory and a funerary monument, while, that of Marcus Aurelius had no funerary purpose. Its base is an altar. It stood, as it does today, in the centre of a vast square, possibly enclosed by colonnades to the north and south, and definitely flanked by a temple to the deified Marcus on the west. Crowned with a statue of the Emperor, the column originally stood over 160 feet high.

Sculpted reliefs became widespread in imperial times. More than thirty-eight arc known to have been carved in the time of Augustus and the Julso-Claudian emperors, including such famous examples as the Villa Medics procession and the Suovetaurilia in the Louvre. A similar number were produced under the Flavians, not to mention the reliefs for the Arch of Titus and the two Cancelleria friezes, which served as models. But the full flowering of the continuous narrative style occurred in Trajan’s time:

on the column bearing his name, of course, but also in the great frieze on the Arch of Constantine. The group depicting the Emperor on horseback attacking his enemies, the work of great masters, can be said to plunge us into a new artistic realm, prefiguring, even before the Column of Marcus Aurelius, the art of the late Empire. The twelve relief panels decorating the two façades of the triumphal arch at Benevento form a stage-by-stage biography of Trajan. The inner walls of the arch depict the Emperor’s involvement in local affairs, in the presence of an old man and a youth, Ordo and Populus. These figures, personifying the constituent elements of the city state, appear on many other monuments, for instance the triumphal arch of the Severans at Leptis Magna.

The military spirit of the reliefs of Marcus Aurelius’s Column, combining ancient Italic traditions with borrowings from frontier regions, reflect the angst caused by the sudden collapse of confidence in the Empire and the need to find a new ideal to restore it. The role played by the Column, the reliefs housed in the Palazzo dei Conservatori and those re-used on the Arch of Constantine — which may originally have decorated the arch giving access to the square in which the Column stood — was decisive in forming the new style. Its elements arc repeated on many sarcophagi, contributing to the spread of the ideology. There is a tendency to focus on the sarcophagus of one of Marcus Aurelius’s generals depicting a battle against barbarians, whilst neglecting other examples, for instance the group of sarcophagi showing the death of Meleager, the finest of which came from the Borghese collection and is now housed in the Louvre. In the case of the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum, the four large panels above the lateral bays represent the Emperor’s eastern expeditions. They epitomize the older realistic style of Roman sculpture, of the time of Julius Caesar, but also incorporate the aesthetic of the Trajanic and Aurelian columns in breaking down the events into a certain number of typical episodes (marches, battles, addresses to the troops, sieges, negotiations and so on). It is relatively easy to identify the scenes by comparing the reliefs with the works of the Roman historians Dio Cassius and Herodian. Herr again, the style of composition, emotional agitation and technical details can fruitfully be compared with reliefs on sarcophagi, particularly the so-called Pietralata group depicting battle scenes, dating from between 185 and 200 AD. That all these monuments prefigure the style of Late Antiquity is because much of the history of Roman sculpture can be written in terms of the development of the historical relief The art of imperial columns continues right down to those of Theodosius and Arcadius, though these are only a step away from Byzantine art and the theology of victory they exemplify is different.

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The Portrait of Roman Realism
Sunday, August 15, 2010 at 8:10 PM | 0 comments  

THE PORTRAIT OF ROMAN REALISM

The portrait as an individual likeness, truly reproducing the features of its subject and, at the same time, exhibiting the style and technique of the artist, has been practised at various times in human history. It was a popular art form among the Romans, serving either to produce the true likeness of a person still living, or as an artist’s interpretation of the personality of someone the artist had never seen. Portraiture implied a value judgment on a person, which was necessarily reflected in the finished work. Compared with Greek antecedents, such as the fifth- century image of Pericles or the fourth—century representations of Socrates or Alexander, it is evident that Roman portraits tended to be more realistic in their physiology and psychology.

We have already seen how important a role busts and statues played in Roman political and social life. This is confirmed by textual evidence, by inscriptions, especially those on the bases of statues, and by the thousands of surviving examples housed in the museums of Rome and other parts of the former Empire. The greatest concentration of identifiable portraits is to be found in Rome, particularly in the Vatican and Capitoline museums. From museum catalogues, it is possible to follow the development of the phenomenon, from imperial portraits done in the metropolis, and provincial replicas of the same, to private likenesses reflecting changing tastes. It is generally accepted that images of the Roman emperors need to be interpreted in terms of their period. But st is equally important to take into account geographical factors, and the difference between portraits executed in the round and in relief. Thus, the relationship between realistic portraiture and the portraiture of commemorative or narrative reliefs is an original aspect of Roman art. In such cases, one needs to be aware of she model used by the sculptor and the portrait’s purpose in relation to imperial propaganda.
The Romans used portraits, as did the Greeks to some extent, for two main purposes: to glorify living individuals and to commemorate the dead. The most characteristic form of celebratory portrait was a statue, generally set up in a public place, the execution and installation of which had social, economic and political implications. A funerary portrait, on the other hand, was essentially private, normally of concern only to the family of the deceased. Yet there was a clear desire to have this portrait seen by as many people as possible. In the upper echelons of society, the two functions were often combined in the practice of public funerals, during which busts of the dead executed in lightweight materials, and normally kept in the home, were taken in public procession to the forum. Such ceremonies served to justify the monopoly of power enjoyed by certain families, in that they stressed the virtue of dead ancestors and the services that they had rendered to the community.

Funerary portraits were produced, and have survived, in large numbers. We shall return to this subject in a later chapter. Stelae sometimes carry a faithful likeness, sometimes an idealized portrait, of the deceased, but the purpose is documentary. Inscriptions give supplementary information as to the age, social background, occupation and activities of the person commemorated. Such potraits, originally confined to the upper classes in Rome, spread downwards through society around the mid-first century BC. Subsequently, and particularly in the provinces, there was little distinction between serious official portraiture and the simplifications of so-called plebeian art. A good example is the funcrary cippi (grave markers) at Taranto.

In the city of Rome, celebratory statues were set up in important locations, such as the Capitol, the forum and the Rostra. Although some locations were more important than others, the points stressed by historical sources are the themes of these statues, the circumstances which gave rise to them, and their sponsors. Having oneself depicted wearing a toga or breastplate, or riding on horseback, does not seem to have been the preserve of the emperor and his family. Nude statues were very rare. In Republican times, public statues were almost exclusively erected in honour of present or former magistrates. We can distinguish two main categories: those ordered by the Senate for important services rendered to the State, generally military in character and associated with a triumphal procession, and those erected by provincial towns, communities or associations close to Rome in gratitude for favours granted by their Roman patrons. According to Pliny, there were so many of this latter category that in 158 BC the Censors banned them from the forum, which was becoming cluttered with statuary. Under the Empire, most portraits were of the Emperor and his family, both in Rome and the provinces. Celebratory statues dedicated to other persons became increasingly rare. Among the triumphal statues portraying the imperial entourage, those incorporated into the magnificent complex of architecture, sculpture and inscriptions in the Forum of Augustus, and later in the Forum of Trajan, are particularly worthy of note. They powerfully express the connection between the fortunes of Rome and the role of the imperial family.

Roman portraiture can be studied from various points of view, though special attention is often paid to problems of identification and style. A painstaking description of each anatomical or psychological detail is accompanied by observations on the material used, dimensions, state of preservation, subsequent restorations and origin of the works concerned. An attempt is made to establish the date of the original and identify the person portrayed. A date is suggested on the basis of clues as to the origin of the work, and the way the hair or facial expression has been treated. But long—established collections of Roman portraits are full of post—Renaissance copies or fakes, produced mainly in Italy. The Louvre collections, made up of works formerly belonging to royalty as well as the Borghese and Campana families, contain many examples. Prior to the purchase of an eleventh exemplar in 1958, of the ten portraits of Caracalla owned by the museum, six were only dubiously authentic, having been restored and reworked. To grasp the full artistic and iconographical value of a portrait, it is often necessary to appraise a piece as it would have been before restoration. There may be lingering doubts as to the authenticity of even recognized works. For example, a high-quality basalt portrait purchased from a dealer in 1956 by the Metropolitan Museum of New York was for many years considered to be a late Hellenistic work dating from the first century BC. It was then compared with a Vatican bust generally regarded as a key to the iconography of Philip the Arabian, and thought to be a portrait of that emperor dating from between 244 and 249 AD. From here it was only a short step to regarding the New York portrait as a work of antiquity and the Vatican bust as an eighteenth—century copy. Yet the latter was first recorded in 1778, and the New York portrait had not appeared on the scene until 1916. Today, laboratory analyses are a reliable guide to the authenticity of a piece. But in the absence of sources and precise indications as to origin, portraits are all too often authenticated and attributed merely on the say-so of connoisseurs of Roman sculpture.

Derived from the practices of specialists in Greek sculpture, the study of Roman portraiture often takes the form of a search for originals, working back from what arc considered to be copies. A second approach is to define the style of a period on the basis of a few works, or even just one. Clearly, this is unsatisfactory. To situate a work in its historical context, it is necessary to take into account a whole range of technical criteria, especially since most of the sculptors, not to mention the subjects, are anonymous. Hence the burgeoning literature dealing with iconographical detail: locks of hair, beards, nostrils, etc. Differing workshop traditions and characteristic tricks of the trade are often the basis on which portraits arc identified as being of this or that subject , whereas attention to the artistic conception in the true sense of the term would suggest that they represent o e and the same person. This means that when insufficient ought is given to the way workshops functioned, and particularly when precise numismatic evidence is lacking, the problem of identification is often tackled in the wrong way. If there were differences between workshops in the capital, must this not also have been, the ease in provincial centres? One of the major defects of certain lines of approach is to consider all newly discovered works solely in relation to the works of a given time, forgetting that workshop practices may have persisted beyond any limited period.

Portraiture was subject to very varied influences. Consider for instance the Egyptian realism of Central- Italic art. Italo-Etruscan influence may well lie behind the Roman patrician custom of keeping wax images of ancestors in the home. The adoption of longer-lasting materials was then a normal stage in the development of portraiture. The oldest Roman portrait that can be identified with any certainty is that featuring on the gold coins of Titus Quinctius Flaminius. The work of a Greek artist, it was struck in commemoration of a victory in 597 BC. From gemstones, it is evident that Hellenistic portraitists were working for Roman patrons during the second century BC, but the first monumental portraits of proven authenticity date from a hundred years later. Although coins hearing the posthumous portrait of Sulla probably echo lost monuments from this period, Pompey is the first historical figure honoured with freestanding statues of which we have definite evidence. These date from the middle of the century. Republican portraiture is characterized by a purely naturalistic representation of the face. The psychology and emotions of the model are not captured in any great depth. The arid naturalism that gained ground in the early part of the first century BC, and is evident in most portraits of famous people of the time, has sometimes been interpreted as an expression of the conservatism of patrician circles or as illustrating the mentality of a nouveau tithe middle class. It is easy to forget that, quite apart from the wishes of the patron, the general atmosphere in which artists lived and woked has to be taken into account. Portraits of Pompey, Caesar and Cicero from around the middle of the first century BC exhibit the fascination with Hellenism then dominant in Rome, but signs of a desire to exteriorize feeling and the inner life were also beginning to appear. This tendency developed during the second Triumvirate, with increasing exploration of emotional and psychological factors. Attempts were made to capture a specific aspect of the subject’s experience. In portraits of Octavian and Anthony, inner tension, changing emotions and bridled passion are reflected in the movement of the facial muscles. If it is genuinely antique, the fine head of Egyptian origin belonging to the Cleveland Museum of Art — sometimes said to be of Mark Anthony but probably a portrait of C. Cornelius Gallus — raises a problem regarding the possible influence of certain works produced in Egypt on sculptors working in Italy. In iconography, this influence ii best seen in the spread of portraits of Alexander the Great. The best synthesis between the prevailing superficiality and this desire for greater expression was manifested in the portraits of Julius Caesar, movingly described by Suetonius. Combining physical features and aspects of personality, his description in its turn raises the question of the relationship between a literary portrait and its counterpart in stone.
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DECORATION HOUSE AND ITS OF ROMAN SCULPTURE
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 11:06 PM | 0 comments  

DECORATION HOUSE AND ITS OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

In Roman times, the difference in decoration between a modest dwelling in a secondary town such as Pompeii and Hadrian’s sumptuous villa at Tivoli was as great as that between a council flat and Buckingham Palace in out own. In both cases, sculpture was an important clement but, whereas humble folk made do with mass-produced reproductions of famous works or souvenirs brought back from their travels, the rich, in laying out their residences and gardens, bought reproductions of statues by the great masters of the past or commissioned works from contemporary artists. From discoveries made at Pompeii, it is evident that terracotta statuettes, for votive or commemorative purposes, were a common feature, and that houses s4crc more or less richly decorated with mural paintings. At the other end of the scale, palaces and the bigger villae were richly adorned with sculpture and, in particular, statuary. For instance, the famous statue of Augustus wearing a breastplate, the so-called Augustus of Prima Pqrta, now housed in the Vatican Museum, came from the suburban villa of Livia ad gallinas albas on the Via Flaminia. Why the wealthy made the choices they did is still something of a mystery. For example, a former villa urbana in the gardens of San Lorenzo in Panisperna, in Rome, housed a monumental statue of the Greek hero Pandion, dating from the first century BC, the base of which was discovered in 1888: we have no idea what Pandion once meant to the owner of this house. More common are statues of Ariadne, the Maenads or the Muses, which may have been intended to represent female members of the family

Private houses in Roman Italy were traditionally organized in insulae (blocks), with rooms arranged around a central rectangular courtyard (atrium), open to the sky. The homes of the wealthy incorporated a peristyle (courtyard surrounded by a colonnade) of Hellenistic inspiration. This type of layout was more popular in the

provinces, in particular for out-of-town villae. Buildings of this kind, which might be the centre of a farm or the country residence of rich city—dwellers, were often quite extensive. Aristocratic residences of this type have been discovered throughout the wider Roman world, in Britain (Fishbourne, Chedworth), Germany (Nennig), south-west Gaul (Montmaurin, Seviac), Spain (Pedros dc la Vega), and North Africa — where the magnificent mosaics of Tabarka show an arcaded gallery flanked by towers — as well as Italy (Settefinestre, Piazza Armerina). Monumental symmetry and an axial arrangement arc characteristic of many of these building complexes. As at Piazza Armerina, they tend to be subtle combinations of curved and rectilinear structures, laid out in accordance with the contours of the site. All are luxurious in the extreme. In most cases, the richness of their architectural decoration has been underestimated. But fragments of marble from different sources, rich columns, entablatures and cornices, bases and capitals prove that sculptors were every bit as active as the mosaicists. The man who commissioned the monumental complex at Piazza Armerina, in Sicily, during the early decades of the fourth century AD, did not stint on splendid Corinthian columns of die so-called Asiatic type, used mainly for the peristyle, nor on rich materials of different origins, many of which had already been used elsewhere and were chosen for their artistic qualities and power to confer prestige.

The interiors of the great imperial palaces were a particularly fruitful field for experiments in architectural decoration. The interplay of curves, vaults, cupolas, arches and walls, and the contrast between solids and voids, were a feature of Nero’s first palace in Rome, the Domus Transitoria (destroyed in the fire of 66 AD), and of the Domus Aurea. The latter, known from the descriptions of Suetonius and Tacitus, was a particularly opulent type of villa urbana, with buildings and gardens of monumental proportions. The vestibule was dominated by a colossal statue of Nero as Sun god, and the gardens, where various species of animal roamed free, were dotted with statues. The famous mural paintings of mom 8, which, like other aspects of this half-ruined residence, were a prime source of inspiration to Renaissance artists, demonstrated the importance of painted architectural decoration, featuring sonic pilasters, their capitals enhanced with stucco work, and painted monumental statues at ground level. Roman mural painting of the 4th style was often akin to stage scenery, the architectural structures and pediments richly decorated with carvings and statues, as in the panel from Herculaneum in the Naples Museum.

After Nero’s death, work on the Domus Aurea was broken off, though Vespasian and Titus continued to use it as a residence. Subsequently, Domitian built the Damns Augustana on the Palatine and the Domus Aurea was destroyed by Trajan during construction of the baths. Domitian’s palace consisted of an area for official receptions on the north—west side, a private wing in the centre,

and a large garden in the form of a stadium to the southeast, inaugurated in 92 AD. There were two entrances to this garden, one giving access to the private residence, the other, with porticos, to the official apartments. Baroque decoration and tricks of perspective, which were to find their fullest expression in Hadrian’s villa, were a feature of the official apartments, arranged around a large peristyle. To the north of this courtyard was the aula regia, a large reception room with niches flanked by tall columns and apses, the basilica, and the lararium (shrine to ancestors), housing images of the imperial family, and, to the south, a colossal triclinium (dining room). As with all these grand imperial residences, it requires an effort of imagination to reconstruct the colours of the walls, perspective effects, striated columns of Phrygian marble and multitude of aediculae containing statues. The walls of the triclinium opened onto the landscaped gardens beyond. On the side opposite the peristyle, the wall ended in a screen of six Egyptian granite columns, flanked by fountains faced with marble. The whole effect was enhanced by the curved colonnades of the other courtyards. All this splendour anticipated by some years the sumptuous layout of Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, described in a later chapter. An essential aspect of the villa’s architecture was the monumental decor of architraves and capitals, and the wealth of statues that is so indicative of Hadrian’s taste for Hellenistic culture. Even when architectural sculpture has disappeared from the residences excavated by archaeologists, mural paintings still bear witness to the Romans’ enthusiasm for sculpted decoration, which they may not always have been able to afford. At Pompeii, there are many examples of the “architectural” 2nd style, with walls of imitation marble, projecting structures supported on columns and a great deal of sculpture. Good examples of this illusionist painting are the House of the Griffons under the Dooms Flavia in Rome, which dates from the late second century BC, the celebrated Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii itself, and the Boscoreale cubiculum, conserved in New York. This type of decoration is often enriched with stucco reliefs, as in the Villa Farnesina on the banks of the Tiber. The ceiling of cubiculum D, now kept in the Museo delle Terme, is decorated with panels of polychrome stucco, featuring victories, cupids, griffons, idyllic landscapes and scenes of the cult of Dionysos, arranged in cycles. This kind of stucco relief faint in outline but executed with great delicacy, running in a continuous band between walls and ceiling, first appeared in late Republican times but was most popular under Augustus when this example was created.

As with funerary reliefs, domestic mural decorations depicting mythological themes or subjects from daily life reflect the overwhelming presence of sculpture in the public and the private 1’s of the Roman people. The sculptures that are represented in mural painting are often modelled on real statues.

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Iconography Of Roman Sculpture
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 9:43 PM | 0 comments  

ICONOGRAPHY OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

Greek and Etruscan antecedents need to be taken into account if we are to understand the symbolism of Roman art. In contrast with Greek tradition, Etrusco—Italic art began to pay attention to gestures of worship, the relationship between members of a group, the isolation of certain figures and the convergence of attitude and eye. The art of Republican Rome responded to the need to use symbolism in the service of the increasingly vast and universal State. The coinage was used as a means of propaganda, while statues tended to define honorific types by depleting individuals dressed in togas, wearing breast- plates, in the guise of hero or mounted on horseback. This latter formula presented a man as superior to his fellows, the heroic bringer of peace. The prince, commonly depicted holding the general’s baton an his right hind as a symbol of his rule, might also be represented making a formal speech (adlocutio) or showing mercy to kneeling barbarians. Roman art tended to set apart the emperor and his entourage and define personalities in terms of hierarchy. Imperial propaganda was used to establish the personal superiority of the prince: on some coins, the prostrate figure of Roma restituta was shown being raised up by the emperor, or the Senate was depicted crowning him in a ceremony known as Senatus pietati Augusti. Under the Flavians, the event legitimizing the new dynasty was the victory over the Jews, celebrated in the dextrarum iunctio (joining of right hands). In Domitian’s victory commemorations, the emperor is shown at a distance from his entourage, dominating a symbolic or allegorical figure representing the defeated enemy. In the time of Trajan, promsnenee was given to the emperor’s

participation in public affairs and military campaigns, and greater efforts were made to involve the spectator. During the second century, the attitude of the sovereign begins to prefigure the absolutist stance of the later Empire. The emperor stretches forth his right hand in a god—like gesture of justice and greeting. The victorious return and triumph are the standard ways of representing a victory. The authority of the commander is expressed in hunting and battle scenes. The idea of majesty is conveyed in free-standing sculpture by images of the monarch seated on a throne and in relief sculpture by a central position. His entourage on either side turns towards him. In the final centuries, the emperor on his throne is presented in a hieratic, frontal pose.

Among the Romans, sculpture also played a vital role in expressing religious attitudes and beliefs. Roman religion was characterized by its syncretism, tending to bring gods and beliefs of various origins into a unified form of worship. At the same time, popular rites in the agrarian tradition were kept separate from official ceremonies. Originally, the Romans had seen the whole world as sacred, and all intellectual activities were inspired by religion. Mixing native traditions with borrowings from neighbouring peoples, they began to deify natural forces and the elements, as apprehended in the world around them and in family life. Some of these forces (numina) became gods in their own right, for instance Saturn, Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Neptune and Vulcan. Private and public pietas was expressed in regular acts of worship, festivals and rites. The gods were grouped together, sometimes into threes, like the “triad” of Etruscan origin that originally presided over the Capitoline. Later arrivals were the gods of Magna Graecia and Sicily, bringing with them Greek myths and beliefs, and certain forms of oriental worship. This open, friendly reception of gods of foreign origin, controlled by the priests, was one of the features of Roman religion. Augustus played a decisive role in making religion an integral part of Roman life. Though excluded from politics, the common people nevertheless participated in a religion with definite political overtones. Subsequently, religious feeling waned, and divine images subsisted mainly in a temple environment, though still with the support of the civic authorities.

Sacrificing to the gods was an essential aspect of Roman religious life, both public and private, and scenes of this kind are among the oldest and most lasting in Roman art. A relief on an altar at Civita Castellana, dating from the first century BC, is the first representation of a Roman officer, or more generally a historical figure, performing a sacrifice. This was a subject that became very popular in the Severan period.

Mythology was the source of many of the images of Roman art. Of prime importance were the Greek myths, suitably adapted and amended. The characters most frequently depicted in sculpture, taken in alphabetical order, were: Achilles, Actaeon, Adonis, Ajax, Apollo, Ariadne, Artemis, Athena, Attis, Bellerophon, Endymion, Europa, Ganymede, the Gigantomachy, Helen, Herakles, Hippolytus, Hylas, Icarus, Iphigenria, Jason, Leda, Medea, Menelaus, Narcissus, Oedipus, Orpheus, Paris, Perseus, Persephone, Phaethon, Telephus, Tereus, Theseus and Ulysses. Hcsakles (Hercules) was the most popular, followed by Achilles, Ganymede, Leda, Iphigeneia, Apollo, Medea, Orpheus and Perseus. Most of the reliefs on which they feature come from funerary monuments, which explains why myths associated with allegories of death are those most frequently represented. The immense popularity of Hercules, victor over evil and death, derives from the fact that he was regarded as the saviour par excellence.

In the provinces, imperial, religious and mythological iconography assumed various forms, depending on underlying pre—Roman traditions. In Gaul, for instance, cross— legged figures, horses, “severed” heads of the kind found at Entremont and two—headed figures are all pre— Conquest. During the Roman period, alongside such great monuments as the Mausoleum of the Julii and the triumphal arches of Glanum, Orange and Carpentras, there were numerous reliefs, altars, stelae and statues which freely expressed a Gaulish mythology combining native traditions and the newly-adopted gods of the Graeco—Roman pantheon. Here, pride of place went to Mercury, the god of commerce, technology and the arts. The intensity of his cult is even recorded in the sixth book of Caesar’s Dc Belle Gallico. Also of importance were Minerva, the sky—god Taranis—Jupiter, Teutates—Mars, Apollo the healer, the antler-bearing Cernunnos, the horse-goddess Epona, Sucellus with his -mallet and large numbers of matrons or mother-goddesses. Gaulish sculptures of these deities are usually easy to identify by their characteristic style.

It is of course impossible to list all the subjects of Roman reliefs: the many depictions of Dionysiac revels, hunting and battle scenes, the motifs on sarcophagi, to which we shall return later; mythological subjects, the worship of Mithras and other oriental deities, the Egyptian cult of Isis, and friezes of religious ceremonies; animals such as the griffon, images of poets and philosophers such as Plautus, Terence or Aristotle, maritime subjects associated with Neptune, or illustrations of public entertainments. In the last category are many detailed representations of chariot races (such as the base of the obelisk in Constantinople). Depictions of the circus show the carceres (paddock), the metae (finishing posts) and the obelisk erected on the spina (low wall running down the middle), statues of the gods set up on columns, the dolphins and eggs for counting the laps and, of course, the progress of the race itself The quadrigae of the four factions are generally depicted in full flight, and the winning chariot, as in the ancient funerary relief in the Lateran, is

driven by a young charioteer. A sparsor can be seen sprinkling sand or water an front of the horses. A funerary relief of this kind suggests that the tomb was intended for a dominus factionis, the head of one of the racing stables. Circus scenes were extremely popular. The Romans were passionate about chariot racing and rivalry between the four factions was the subject of great popular enthusiasm. The symbolism of seasons and colours is an important aspect of such scenes, while the victory of a charioteer depicted on a tomb represents man’s victory over death. Chariot races were also one of the most popular subjects for Roman interior decoration in Late Antiquity, as witnessed by the mosaics of the rural villa at Piazza Armerina or the well-to-do town houses of Barcelona or Lyons.

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ORIGINALS AND COPIES OF ROMAN SCULPTURE
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 9:40 PM | 0 comments  

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

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The New Functions Of Sculpture Of Roman
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 6:50 PM | 0 comments  

THE NEW FUNCTIONS OF SCULPTURE OF ROMAN
ARCH ITECTURE AND SCULPTURE

Roman sculpture gradually gained a foothold in towns and cities in the form of public statues, some of them freestanding and others incorporated into buildings. Some were reliefs covering large areas of important monuments; others featured decorative plant or geometric motifs. Most architectural innovation took place in towns and cities, where urban planning led to the construction of new buildings, forums and grand colonnades. Roman architecture, which adopted the Done, Ionic and Corinthian orders of Greek architecture, frequently displayed a new aesthetic direction. Public buildings and monuments combined austere grandeur with technological innovation, thanks to the invention of rubblework; many of them were built by politicians and military commanders.

The desire for grandeur on the part of senior dignitaries was most clearly reflected in the architecture of the Forum in Rome. Caesar decided to expand the Roman Forum at the foot of the Capitoline by building a new one alongside it; work on this began in 51 BC. A wide square surrounded by porticos highlighted the Temple of Venus Genetrix, which was home to the votive statue by the neo-Attic sculptor Arcesilaus. The Forum of Augustus was inaugurated in 2 BC; this was a new type of forum which served as a commemorative monument. Sculpture played an essential part in it. Many fragments of statues have survived. In particular, the forum contained statues of princes and kings. Aeneas, together with his father and son, probably occupied the northern hemicycle, and Romulus the southern one. These hemicycles, decorated with polychrome marble, surrounded the temple built to commemorate Octavian’s victory at Philippi in 42 BC. The temple was dedicated to Mars Ultor (Mars the Avenger), and was richly decorated with statues of Mars, Venus, Romulus, Fortuna and Rome between the Palatine and the Tiber, as well as the famous votive group featuring Mars, Venus and the divine Julius Caesar. There was also a renowned quadriga of Augustus as Pater Patriae, though none of this has survived and it is hard to pinpoint its location. The theme of this iconography came in for renewed study as part of a famous German exhibition dedicated to the Emperor Augustus.

The two main buildings of the Italic forum were the temple and the basilica. The temple, with its high podium, was located axially, and the cella, as in Greek architecture, was situated behind the pronaos or porch at the end of the façade portico. The axial nature of the temple was also emphasized by its position at one end of the forum. The basslsea was a Roman innovation: a large rectangular meeting—hall with a roof borne on columns or pillars, sometimes on all four sides.

Triumphal monuments were the most obvious example of sculpture being used as propaganda to express the dominant ideology, either within the city or in some eases at its gates. Triumphal monuments were particularly ostentatious monuments. They had one or more spans, and were often built to commemorate military victories. The spans, as in the Arch of Trajan at Timgad or that of Septimius Severus in Rome, were flanked by columns, often arranged in pairs. The spaces between them were covered in reliefs depicting the event commemorated by the arch. The building of the Arch of Trajan at Benevento was approved by the Senate in 114 to mark the opening of the new Via Appia, but was completed under Hadrian. The city side depicted peaceful activities, while the side facing into the country showed military scenes and the Emperor’s actions in the provinces. The inside of the span

showed the institutio alimentaria (a state loan to landowners where the interest was reinvested in education), an act of Trajan’s considered worthy of commemoration. As with all arches, the reasons for its construction are stated in a long inscription at the top. The arch was originally crowned with free-standing statuary, often in bronze. Another example of urban propaganda was seen in the triumphal columns, whose sculpted decoration was essential to their meaning. Trajan’s Column in Rome, which is very similar in style to the reliefs on the arch at Benevento, depicts the Emperor’s conflict with the Dacians.

The theatrical architecture of buildings used for public entertainment was also highly characteristic of Roman art. The Colosseum epitomizes the architecture of the amphitheatre. Begun by Vespasian and completed by Domitian, this monument has become famous both for its external appearance and the fact that it has four storeys, featuring each of the three orders in the arcades and in the pilasters with demi-columns that frame them. The Done order appears on the ground floor, the Ionic above it, and the Corinthian on the third level. The windows on the fourth storey, which had no arcades, originally alternated with gilded bronze shields. In amphitheatres as in all other public buildings, statues, stucco reliefs and decorative sculpture of all kinds were omnipresent. The theatre, which created a truly monumental scene in front of the semicircular tiers, was the best example of this; the sculpted decor was part of the drama being played out on the

stage. This monumental decoration was also found in the architecture of public and private baths. These were one of the most important contributions of Roman architecture, which enlarged on the traditional functions of the Greek gymnasium. The public baths at Ephesus and Pergamon, for example, included a large rectangular hall ending with a palaestra, whose inside walls were decorated with columns and statues similar to those used on the façades of theatres and nymphaea. The great Roman baths of Caracalla and Diocletian were huge leisure centres, with libraries, meeting rooms, swimming pools, gardens and fountains, in addition to the various hot and cold rooms. The baths played an important part in Roman life. The only imperial baths in Rome whose sculptural decoration it is possible to reconstruct are those of Caracalla, where we can see how ideally suited the baroque style of Severinus was to the expression of monumental drama. There were many niches in the Baths of Caracalla, showing that it housed a large number of statues. These were mainly concentrated in the rooms around the palaestra and in the area of the large swimming pool, whose northern wall resembled a scaenae frons with two levels of columns and aedicules among which stood eighteen large statues. Study of the niches, bases and ground-level emplacements reveals that the ensemble included over a hundred free-standing sculptures. The giant head of Asclepius at the Museo delle Terme, the Farnese Hercules and many other mythological and imperial sculptures derive from this source.

The Roman love of pomp and show, set off by sculpture, is clearly evidenced by the residences and palaces of the wealthy, which we shall deal with more fully later. Analysis of the decor of imperial residences reveals the role played by sculpture: the tendency already evident in Nero’s Golden House was developed and came to full flower in Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli. There is often a striking contrast in buildings of this kind, as in the Roman baths, between the purely functional severity of the outside and the baroque profusion of the interior decoration.

Looking beyond his palace or residence, the Roman patrician also set great store by his last resting place, his mausoleum or tomb. Beginning in Republican times, impressive funerary monuments were erected on either side of the major consular routes, some built to a circular plan with a number of separate chambers and a vaulted roof. The Pantheon and the role played by statuary in its decoration immediately spring to mind, but equally deserving of attention are the many sarcophagi, stelae and altars we shall be reviewing in a later chapter. These monuments were set out in avenues at the gates of the town and, like the cemeteries of our own day, were veritable repositories of sculpture in all its forms. The sixty-three tombs at Pompeii’s Herculaneum gate are a case in point. It is clear that the purpose of these monuments was not so much to express preoccupations regarding the next life as to present the career, life and achievements of those with the means to pay for a sculpted tomb in this.

The reliefs from the funerary monument of the Haterii, conserved in the Vatican Museum, include realistic illustrations of the buildings erected in Rome under the Flavian emperors. Busts of gods, funeral scenes and busts of members of the family constitute an iconographic project reflecting the ambitions of the sponsor. They also bear witness to the place of sculpture in Roman architecture, as seen by a citizen who wanted it incorporated in his tomb. The image of Rome conveyed by the Haterii monument is that which appealed most to the men of the Renaissance: a capital city dominated by sculpture.


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