THE ROMAN ART

Roman art has often been considered less important than Greek art, and Neo-Classicism helped to disseminate the notion that Greek idealism was superior to Roman realism. For a long time, there was a refusal to consider Roman art in its own right rather than as a pale reflection of Greek art, which was regarded as intellectual, abstract and philosophical, where Roman art was seen as mundane, concrete and historical. These profound conceptual differences can be observed in representations of war, battle and victory over foreign peoples. In their depictions of such events, the Greeks used myths, in which the most civilized combatant, the positive element of the narrative, was destined to achieve victory; the images show struggles between gods and giants, centaurs and apiths and Greeks and Amazons. In Roman art, myth and religion give way to the historical reality depicted in the narratives traditionally displayed on triumphal columns. This contrast between almost abstract representation and reliefs sometimes regarded as almost cinematographic in their narrative of events clearly demonstrates the objective and symbolic difference between these two forms of artistic expression.

These difficulties in defining an aesthetic were compounded by the fact that during both the Republican and Imperial eras Roman art had to confront the dominance of Hellenism. The Greek form of artistic expression proved able to outlast official Roman art. This formal continuity was not due solely to the Roman taste for Greek art; it also reflected the strength of tradition, which can be clearly seen in the religious iconography and the correlations between Greek and Roman gods, despite the importance of the Italic world (Minerva, for example, derives from the Etruscan goddess Menvra rather than the Greek Athena).

This phenomenon persisted during the early centuries of the Christian era, as can be seen in the transition from the Greek Nike through the Roman Victory to the Christian angel, from Orpheus to the representation of David or Christ, and from the ancient philosophers to the Christian apostles, etc.

Another aspect of the pervasiveness of Hellenism in Roman art was the demand among the upper classes in Roman society for works of Greek art. Contact with Greek art led to the development of a passion for collecting that gradually permeated the Roman world, particularly following the conquests of Southern Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. Imported works of art enjoyed enormous prestige in Rome, but at the same time, paradoxically, certain groups in the upper strata of Roman society began to reject foreign works of art on the grounds that their arrival in Rome was one of the principal causes of the breakdown of traditional morality. Cicero bears witness to the existence of genuine connoisseurs of Greek art and, as can be seen at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli and at many other sites, replicas of Greek sculptures and Roman interpretations of Greek models were given absolute pride of place. Yet Roman art existed in its own right, and original sculpture was produced in a wide range of different fields.

The taste for narrative relief, evocation of the artistic characteristics of earlier centuries, a sense of setting, the place of sculpture in architecture and the individualization of portraits are all aspects that help to define Roman art, despite the changes that occurred over the centuries. Trends in official art, whether patrician or imperial, stand in contrast to the evolution of popular or plebeian trends. It was only from the third century onwards that the second tendency began to show spectacular development in the field of sculpture, and that development continued until the Early Middle Ages. A distinction has to be made between public and private sculpture, between urban and rural sculpture and between exports of finished products and local production, and some attempt also has to be made to take account of the enormous geographical scope of Roman art.

In seeking to understand Roman art in the context of the society that consumed it, it has to be asked whether Roman art is that of the city of Rome and of the regions under the direct influence of the capital and its immediate surroundings, or whether the term is taken to refer generally to the art of the Ancient World during the Roman period. The merging of the arts of the capital with those indigenous to North Africa, the Orient, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul and Germania gave rise to provincial forms of artistic expression that helped to give Roman art its originality and diversity. It was not until the centuries immediately following the founding of the city of Rome that the region of central Italy began to play a central role in defining Roman art. Subsequently, Roman art came to incorporate the full variety of styles denying from regions politically dependent on Rome.

The study of Roman sculpture dates back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. During the latter period, in particular, artists discovered Rome and its ancient monuments, and collectors developed a passion for the art of the Classical period. During the sixteenth century, many ancient monuments in Rome were converted and restored to use, but the search for outstanding pieces very often took precedence over the conservation of surviving complexes. Thus Bramante, who methodically excavated the Forum, making careful note of everything that he discovered, had no compunction about destroying a monument that he had just been studying in order to make use of the materials. At the time, the conservation of ancient remains was guided more by notions of artistic value than historical interest, and efforts were concentrated on saving the most beautiful architectural items, such as colonnades, large ornamental bosses or coffered domes, and sculptures in particular; the latter were put on display in palaces and residences. Shortly after his installation in Rome in 1552, Cardinal du Bellay had gardens laid out in the western section of the Baths of Diocletian next to his palace, in order to display the large number of sculptures in his collection to maximum effect.

The site then comprised two large rotundas, linked by a hemicycle with steps and, in the wall surmounting it, a large number of niches designed to accommodate the most valuable of his sculptures. This Renaissance transformation of an ancient building is proof of the importance the Humanists ascribed to Roman sculpture, for which they attempted to reconstruct a picturesque, mannerist setting. Enthusiasm for Roman Antiquity continued throughout the seventeenth century, with studies and compendiums like those made by Bosio or Ciampini. Scholarship, travel and the development of archaeology eventually combined in the eighteenth century to supply a scientific definition of the art of Antiquity. J.J. Winckelmann broke with baroque thinking to defend the ancient heritage, which he saw as essentially Greek. He travelled, studied extant works of art at first hand and compiled catalogues. His Unpublished Monuments of Antiquity, exploined ond illustroted

(1767), or his History of Ancient Art (1764), were instrumental in forming eighteenth-century European taste. For the first time, more attention was paid to sculpture than to painting. Winckelmann’s ideas held sway throughout the nineteenth century and are still influential in the twentieth. They have not, however, been helpful for the study of Roman art, because he attempted to identify a specific period of Greek art with “Art” as such, thereby giving Greek art a position of pre-eminence over Roman.

In the nineteenth century, Jakob Burckhardt (1818—1897) in defining cultural history drew a parallel between political history and the history of art. He applied his method to the Italian Renaissance, to Greek sculpture and to Late Antiquity, explaining the transition from paganism to Christianity in his work on Constantine the Great (1853). But it was left to two Viennese historians of medieval and modern art, Franz Wickhoff (1853—1909) and Alois Riegl (1858—1905), to recognize the originality of Roman art. As they saw it, three elements defined the artistic language unique to the Roman world: the portrait, the continuous narrative relief, and the introduction of perspective and landscape elements into painting and relief sculpture.

Another aspect of the discovery of Roman sculpture, as with Greek sculpture, was the growing importance of archaeological discoveries and explorations during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gradually, as major excavations got under way, people began to take an interest in Roman sculpture for its own sake, rather than as a means of tracing Greek originals. The first excavations at Herculaneum were undertaken in I7tt, and between 1738 and 1766 the whole site was systematically explored. In 1748, work began on Pompeii, where less effort was required because the layer of lava covering the remains was thinner and there was a greater admixture of ash. As archaeological methods progressed, different aspects of daily life in a Roman town began to emerge. Finally, in 1809, work was started on the Roman Forum.

Piecing together the development of Etruscan art in the first three-quarters of the fourth century BC is a real challenge for modern critics, even more difficult than that posed by the last three-quarters of the previous century. From the end of the fifth century and throughout the fourth century, the revival of the art and craft tradition (initially more quantitative than qualitative) took place against the background of an Etruria already shorn of extensive territories in Campania and soon to lose those in the Po valley. Thus the path taken by this revival was far from simple or easily discernible.

The political revival on which the new social order and the recovery of the local artisanal tradition depended proved slow; the directions it took were tortuous and remain unclear. In many respects, it was the nobility, in search of self—glorification, that led the recovery in commissions for works of art, either in the private sphere of tombs, which were becoming increasingly complex in style and were sometimes richly decorated with paintings and sculptures, or in the public sphere. After a long period of inactivity that had lasted almost a century, building began again in the cities of southern Etruria, which encouraged the development of terracotta sculpture. The economic recovery of the fourth century helped to restore favourable conditions, not unlike those of the sixth century, and led to the emergence of a stratified society and of a middle class interested in consuming art. The process of revival was thus a complex one that cannot he reduced to a single unified phenomenon.

The city of Volsinii-Orvieto played an important role in this process. It was the site of the Fanum (shrine) of Voltumnae, a deity common to all Etruscans, and of important annual ceremonies that served to legitimate the quasi—political, quasi—religious primacy of one city over the others, and that of the priuceps of that city over those in all Etruria. Volsinii’s position as Etruriar caput — “the moral capital of Etruria” as Livy described it comparable - with that of Olympia or Delphi in the Greek world, led to the development of a great deal of artistic activity around the city, notably the production of sumptuous bronze votive sculptures. According to cine Greek source that tells of the sacking of the city by the Romans in 265 BC, there were more than two thousand such sculptures. It is no accident that the Mars from Todi, which we have already described as a transitional work pointing the way towards the renaissance of the fourth century, has been attributed to the Volsinii workshop. Nor is at a coincidence that the sanctuaries of that city, where the Etruscan aristocracies battled for prestige and dedacated their votive offerings, were repaired, rebuilt and even extended from the end of the fifth century BC onwards.

The art of terracotta sculpture in Volsinii, which produced the splendid architectonic terracottas that adorned at least two temples in the city (Via S. Leonardo and Belvedere) and two extramural ones (Cannicella and Campo della Fiera), clearly reflects the formal and cultural contradictions that characterized the end of the fifth century and the early decades of the fourth century. The oldest and most highly developed of these terracotta sculptures are those from the temple in the Via S. Leonardo, which date from the end of the fifth century. The very beautiful head of Zeus-Tinia, and the equally beautiful one of the female deity that belongs with it, undoubtedly seek to arouse feelings of pietas and reverentia:

they draw upon models from the earliest Classical period, both in the conception of the face, which is very close to the Severe style, and in the stylized, not truly Classical rendering, of the hair and beard. However, the other pieces in the pediment group, such as the torso of a young man wearing a bracelet adorned with bullae, with its extremely delicate modelling, show that the decoration was conceived towards the cud of the fifth century and that the archaisms apparent in the treatment of the figures of the deities were introduced deliberately for subtle ideological ends.

The rear pediment of the Belvedere of Orvieto (late fifth—early fourth century BC), the decorations of which depict a recently identified Homeric theme, was also made up of traditional elements of the Severe style combined with new features characteristic of the late fifth century. The scene is the drawing of lots for the Achaean hero to face Hector, the Trojan champion, and is certainly an allusion to the annual investiture of the Etruscan princeps held at Volsinii. Here, however, the elements of the Severe style are not consciously employed as stylistic devices, but reflect rather the enduring qualities of a living past that shows through the incompletely assimilated Classical form. Although they are squat and some of their gestures are inelegant, the bodies conform to the Classical canon. But the treatment of the hair, draperies and various facial detail, redolent of the Severe style, does not add any particular note of solemnity and is, on the contrary, rather expressionistic. Thus the persistence of the older Severe style influenced two works produced at the same time and in the same place in two entirely different ways and to two entirely different ends.

The abundance of artistic material and evidence means that careful examination of the work produced in Volsinii clearly reveals the path taken by Etruscan figurative culture during this period of renaissance, when the focus of attention was on the acquisition of Classical forms. The Mars from Todi, already mentioned above, exemplifies the deliberate attempts by sculptors at Volsinii to assimilate elements of the Classical style at a relatively early stage. The bronze head from Bolsena, often dated from the first half of the fourth century but belonging in fact to the fifth century BC, demonstrates the profound allegiance of the Etruscan aristocracy to the Severe style, which was left almost untouched by the early incursions of the softer Classical style. Thus the Bolsena head represents the beginning of this slow process of formal change, while the Cagli head, which ‘was undoubtedly produced in a Volsinii workshop and subsequently transferred, like the Mars from Todi, to the adjoining region of Picenum, is an exceptional piece, in which the ascendant Classical forms have been fully assimilated, making it representative of the culmination of this process between the first and second quarters of the fourth century. It is the work produced at Volsinii that most clearly illustrates how Etruscan figurative culture was able to free itself from the Severe style. A substantial number of high-quality items has come down to us, mainly public commissions produced at a time when the city was developing rapidly, or votive offerings, made of metal, from the highest strata of society. In other eases, by contrast, evidence available is only episodic; the works that have survived seem isolated and difficult to place in context. As far as sculpting in bronze is concerned, the extraordinary votive statue of the Chimaera foreshadows, as early as the first decades of the fourth century, the key role in the metalworking industry that the more northerly city of Arezzo was to acquire during the Hellenistic period. The design of the piece is very eclectic, with Severe or even Archaic elements, such as the lion mask, the highly stylized mane and the schematic appearance of the rib cage, combining with purely Classical elements, such as the fluid treatment of the surfaces, which are delicately animated by bulging veins and tightly tensed muscles.

However, the workshops of the Orvieto region were not alone in the difficulties they had experienced at the end of the fifth century BC. Workshops in the cities of southern Etruria were beginning to awaken from the torpor into which the oligarchic austerity of the fifth century had plunged them, and were encountering even greater difficulties than their northern counterparts because of the greater economic and cultural disruptions they had been forced to undergo. While there seemed to be no revival in public commissions in the northern cities, at Tarquinia (the sanctuary of the “Ara della Regina”) and at Cerveteri (sanctuary of Pyrgi), architectonic terracottas of very high quality have been found that date from the middle of the fourth century or shortly afterwards (thus slightly after the flowering of terracotta modelling at Volsinii) and follow the canons of Classical Greek sculpture in its late phase.

In these southern cities, there were not enough private commissions to fill the gap between the end of the fifth and the middle of the fourth centuries BC, and little votive sculpture of high quality was produced during this period. However, as the intermediate social classes gradually reconstituted themselves, an opening developed for medium—sized and large—scale votive sculpture in terracotta (usually produced by moulding) that was to constitute most of what we know about votive sculpture in the following period. Production of funerary sculpture (which had never ceased in the northern city of Chiusi) slowly recommenced, taking as its point of departure the constantly repeated and renewed theme of the figure reclining on the lid of a sarcophagus This typology was possibly inspired by the prestige of the Chiusi aristocracy, and was to enjoy considerable success in the centuries to come. However, the first steps down the road to recovery were hesitant, as is demonstrated, for example, by the flat, poorly delineated figures on the sarcophagus from the “Tomb of the Sarcophagi” at Cerveteri, which dates from the end of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century. Some twenty years later, however, the two sarcophagi for the “Tomb of the Tetnies” were made at Vulci, probably under the influence of the more active artistic environment in neighbouring Volsinsii. The conjugal couple on each lid, as well as the sculptures on the sarcophagus itself, depicting both mythological and “real- life” scenes, are wholly Classical in the rendering of the anatomy and the drape of the garments, although here and there, in the faces of the deceased and the draperies, there are glimpses of the style of the previous century. The sarcophagus at Tarquinia known as the “Tomb of the Magnate”, which dates from the third quarter of the fourth century, represents the culmination of the process. Here, the earlier tradition is no longer represented by deliberate repetitions of significant details but rather by conventional borrowings of marginal elements, such as the sphinx and lion cubs placed as akroteria at the ends of the sarcophagus. Henceforth, on the eve of the great Hellenistic transformation, the Classical style became a common heritage for all Etruria.

ROMAN THE IMPERIAL PERIOD

The Imperial period is a curious time in the history of Greece. Politically, the country now consisted only of Achaea, one province among many, ruled from Corinth by its Roman governor. For this reason, it is often called the Roman period. However, this term does wrongly suggest that Greece was then part of a general process of Romanization, and while from the point of view of the Empire’s internal organization it may have been worth no more than the Gaulish or African provinces — economically it was worth much less — it had a special place in literature and art.

This is hardly surprising if we think of the passion for all things Hellenic which affected the Romans after the middle of the Hellenistic period, their love of the Greek language and the writers and philosophers of Greece, and of its art. The evidence is the many pictures and statues that were taken to Rome, and the replicas that were made when originals were inaccessible. Under the Empire the tendency was by no means reversed; for an example, we have only to look at to see Hadrian still surrounding himself with Greek works in the second century AD. Consequently Greece, including the old Greek cities of Asia Minor, remained a pole of attraction both academic (for many young men came to study philosophy and rhetoric in Athens) and at the touristic level. Pausanias would not have written so detailed a Description of Greece in the second century AD if the great Sites and monuments had not seen plenty of visitors. There must even have been travel souvenirs on sale then; at least, St Paul tells us that miniature silver replicas of the temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, were for sale in Ephesus, an interesting piece of information for the archaeology of Greek sculpture, even though no such replicas have been preserved.

The items Pausanias describes as “worth seeing”, and conversely those he does not describe, tell us a good deal about what must have interested travellers, chiefly the art of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. But this great interest in Classicism did not mean that contemporary production was slowing down, and the history of Greek art cannot be brought to an end with the advent of the Roman Empire, though it is customary to do so.

There is a great deal of Greek sculpture of the Imperial period, and we should define its particular characteristics. Ignoring, from the stylistic point of view, the tentative appearance of exoticism with two statues in the Egyptian style from Marathon, the results of a persistent taste for the antique (such as the copy of a caryatid from the Erechtheion discovered in Corinth), and from the sociological point of view the role of commissions from emperors or weathy patrons such as the rhetorician Herodes Atticus, three main features remain.

Agrippa in Athens and the barbarian prisoners featured on a Corinthian façade. In relief, the “Tower of the Winds” in Athens, actually a water—clock set in a new kind of octagonal tower, owes its name to the eight personified winds carved on its upper area. Also in Athens, the Monument of Philopappos is a tomb, also of an unusual type, with its concave façade containing reliefs which curve with it. Chiefly in Asia Minor, pillars and door frames are decorated with profuse foliage sculpture, with small figures nestling in the spaces.

In theatres the stage, originally almost at ground level and then, in the Hellenistic period, supported on a colon-nade, now rested on a plinth which sometimes featured relief decoration, drawing principally on imagery associated with Dionysos, the patron of drama. In Athens, reliefs show the birth of the god, the sacrifice offered to him by Icarios, etc. Less well known are the reliefs of the theatre of Perge, a little to the north of Antalya, presenting a much larger Dionysiac ensemble: the childhood of the god — his birth, Hermes carrying him to the nymphs of Nysa, his first bath — and then the procession he leads, standing in a chariot drawn by panthers.

Still crowned by statues, and usually with reliefs on several of its surfaces, the triumphal arch provided plenty of opportunity for sculpture in the Imperial period, but it remained more common in the Latin west than in the Hellenized east. In Thessalonika, however, the arch of Galerius, built in 303, still preserves reliefs showing the victories of the Romans over the Persians.

The chest of the sarcophagus is decorated either on all sides, or more frequently only on some of them, with reliefs showing subjects less varied than in Italy. They usually depict heavy garlands hanging between the heads of oxen, sometimes held up by little Cupids. Mythological subjects such as Amazonomachies, the Calydonian Hunt, the stories of Hippolytos or Bellerophon, Erotes, and so on, arc much less common.

We are all of course at liberty to judge the strength or otherwise of Roman influence on Greek art in the Imperial period. Whatever our verdict, it is crucial to recognize that art, like language, institutions and other social factors, has a part to play in encounters between civilizations. It was mentioned above that the “barbarian” world of the fourth century BC had Hellenized itself artistically, and more particularly in sculpture, long before it was Hellenized politically and perhaps even linguistically. Here it is the other way round: the Romanization of the Greek provinces of the Empire was a political process. In art and language, Greece largely remained Greek. But whether art borrows from abroad or resists its influence, it is not solely there to be observed and admired, as is too often believed. Art itself is a political fact, among other things, and there can be no justification for divorcing the history of art from history as a whole.

When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, he left behind him a world turned upside down. In ten years he had conquered the entire Persian empire, soon to be divided up into the four great dynasties of Macedonian origin: the Antigonids in Macedonia, the Lagids (or Ptolemics) in Egypt, the Attalids in Pergamum, and the Seleucids in a Syrian kingdom comprising the whole Middle East. The period is known today as Hellenistic because it saw the spread of Hellenism. Massive and formerly barbarian provinces came under Greek influence, at least politically: the widening of horizons led to profound social and economic changes and the introduction of new ways of thought; finally, power moved to new capitals situated outside Greece itself, the cities of Alexandria, Antioch and Pergamum, which became art centres. Amidst these changes, art was inevitably going to start depicting new subjects in new styles.

There is no doubt that the key to Hellenistic art is the rejection of Classical “idealism”: a preference for the particular over the universal, for the momentary over the timeless. This tendency, which relates Hellenism to baroque art of the modern period, is the source of the term “Hellenistic baroque”, one of those incautious labels to be avoided because they lead to the erroneous assumption of parallels between styles which have few features in common.

An interest in the fleeting moment was not unknown in the Classical period either — the sculptor Skopas is credited with the open lips and rolling eyes of the “Skopaic look” but now it comes to the fore; often coupled with a concern for particularities, giving pride of place to the least durable of situations: to a momentary effort, like that of the “Borghese Warrior”; to the pain of Marsyas tied to the tree and flayed alive, of Laocoon and his sons strangled by the serpent, of the giants of the Altar of Pergamum, of the Drunken Old Woman perhaps abandoned by everyone, holding the jar of wine which she cradles in her arms instead of a child; and to death, the death of the Dying Gaul or the Gaul killing himself while his wife dies. This concern to show the fleeting moment does not just mean new postures — the collapse of the Gaul’s wife, the enervated pose of the Drunken Old Woman, or the struggle of Laocoon — but some unusual touches such as the blood flowing from the wound on the Dying Gaul’s thigh, or the way the scrotum n contracted under the influence of pain and effort in the Laocoon and the Borghese Warrior.

In the next chapter we shall be coming to the period described as Hellenistic; the adjective, coined in modern times on the pattern of ancient Greek and meaning “living in the manner of the Greeks” corresponds to the noun Hellenism, the use of which was popularized by the German scholar J.G. Droysen to designate the three centuries from 323 to 30 BC, covering the period from the depth of Alexander the Great to the founding of the Roman Empire. During this period all the territories from Egypt to the frontiers of India, once the possessions of the Great King of Persia and now conquered by Alexander, came under the power of Greek dynasties, a fact which necessarily contributed to Hellenizing them. The artistic Hellenization of the east, however, began long before its political subjugation. There is evidence of that in several monuments which are important and exceptional enough to merit brief description here.

a warrior stands before a seated person with whom he is exchanging a helmet. A bird with the breast of a woman is placed on each side of the group. These figures were at first taken for harpies, but they are much more likely to be sirens (the Greek siren was part woman, part bird and not, like the mermaid of later European folklore, a woman with a fish’s tail). They are carrying off small human figures. The west relief, which contains the door to the funerary chamber, shows a seated woman at each end, one holding a patera, the other holding a pomegranate in her lefr hand and a flower in her right hand; three more women are depicted in front of her. The first carries nothing, the second is smelling a flower and carrying a pomegranate, the third holds an egg. Above the door to the funerary chamber a cow is suckling her calf The two other reliefs are equally enigmatic. The length of these descriptions reflects the commentators’ perplexity: the reliefs of the Monument of the Harpies are stylistically close to reliefs of the same period in Greece, but thematically diverse. There can be no doubt that the images relate to native, non-Greek funerary ritual and eschatology. As we know nothing about that ritual, the meaning of the scenes almost entirely escapes us; we can be fairly sure that the small human figures being carried off by the sirens are the souls of the dead, and the repeated pomegranate motif signifies that in Lycia, as in Greece, the pomegranate was linked with death, but are the seated figures dead people or gods? Are the scenes illustrated ceremonies of this world or the underworld? Why is there a cow suckling her calf? We know so little of Lycian belief and cult practices connected with death that none of these questions can be answered.

Finally, we may add to these four great funerary monuments of the neighbouring provinces of Lycia and Caria the sarcophagi discovered so a necropolis near Sidon in ancient Phoenicia. Like the much later sarcophagi of the Imperial period, these are marble chests with lids, their sides ornamented with reliefs. The sarcophagus known as the “Sarcophagus of the Sarrap”, dating from the middle of the fifth century, has been given that name for its representation of the life of an oriental ruler, seen banqueting, enthroned and hunting. Another sarcophagus, probably of some decades later, has a tall, arched lid of the kind usual in Lycia, and has therefore been dubbed ‘Lycian Sarcophagus”. The cover is carved with sphinxes and griffins, there arc scenes of a centauromachy o the short sides of the chest, boys in quadrigas hunting kiln on one of the long sides, and horsemen, naked but wearing petasi or tiaras, hunting wild boar on the other. The fourth-century “Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women” takes its name from its very unusual decoration, reminiscent of the standing female statues between the columns of the Nereid Monument. Ionic columns are carved on the sides of the chest, linked half-way up by a parapet upon which draped women in grief—stricken attitudes are sitting or leaning. Last, and dating from the end of the century, the ‘4Alexander Sarcophagus” shows a battle between Greeks and Persians on two consecutive sides of the chest, with hunting scenes on the other sides (the creatures being hunted are the stag, lion and panther). The “Alexander Sarcophagus” never contained the mortal remains of the famous conqueror. In fact we know nothing about the makers or occupants of any of the tombs described above, with the sole exception of the Mausoleum, which escaped such anonymity because of its fame as one of the Wonders of the World. In the case of the Mausoleum, we are lucky enough to know that a non-Greek ruler of Caria, part of the Persian Empire, or rather his wife Artemisia, commissioned Greek sculptors and architects to build and decorate a vast tomb at Halikarnaisos, not particularly surprising when we remember that this city, situated on the Anatolian coast, was only a few sea miles from the island of Kos, so that it was very natural for its people to be familiar with Greek art and appreciate it. There we know the name of the person who commissioned the work and the artists who carried it out, but although their equivalents elsewhere may remain anonymous they must have been people of the same kind: “barbarians” (the term used in ancient Greece for all non—Hellenes), influenced and attracted by Hellenism, who commissioned Greek artists, or at least artists trained in the Greek manner.

Commissions of this nature, bringing Greeks to work in foreign countries, explain the special character of these monuments. In one way it ii easy to understand why they regularly feature in books on Greek art; one hardly needs to say that the friezes of the Mausoleum of Halikarnasios are entirely in keeping with other contemporary Greek relief, since we know for certain they are by Skopas or one of his colleagues. Moreover, the unknown creator of the Nereidi made statues in the round, very like the reliefs on the Acropolis at Athens or the Victories on the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike in their variety of attitudes, and their wind—blown or wet draperies clinging to the body. Similarly, the cavalcade of boar-hunters on the “Lycian Sarcophagus” at Sidon is reminiscent of the horsemen in the Panathenaic frieze, and the quadrigas hunting the lion are not inferior to similar Athenian votive reliefs. More examples could easily be given.

THE ART OF THE GOLDSMITH OF GREEK ARTS

The work of the goldsmith, understood as metal-work in gold, and sometimes extended to include silver and bronze, is not so itself linked to the figurative sculpture under discussion here; sculpture is rarely made in precious metals, and wrought metals, while always worked into various shapes, are less often figurative. However, it is true that the most elaborate pieces of worked metal do hear images so relief or even in the round, and thus it becomes a subdivision of sculpture, sharing the same stylistic approach and working methods; the art of the Florentine goldsmith Cellini, for example, is the same in his statue of Perseus and his salt—cellar. While the art of the goldsmith is technically related to sculpture, it is obviously different in terms of the craft itself — just as the bronzesmith and the sculptor in marble do not work in the same way to make the same kinds of images — and it is even more different in terms of use: the goldsmith made things in precious materials but for down-to-earth purposes, chiefly domestic utensils or weaponry.

The metal-working tradition is an old one; we have good evidence of this in the bronze protomes of griffins and sirens attached to Archaic cauldrons, and spectacular evidence in the piece dug up at Vix near Châtillon-surSeine. This is an enormous sixth—century krater (its date and precise origins are disputed), with a series of eight quadrigas alternating with seven warriors on its neck. However, it is mainly from the fourth century that pieces made in gold or gilded bronze have come down to us: the decoration of the “treasure of Panagjurist” (in Bulgaria), consisting of four rhyta, three jugs, an amphora and a gold phiale, can be identified as Greek as much by its style as from the subjects depicted: the judgment of Paris, the combats of Herakles with the hind of Keryneia and of Theseus with the bull of Marathon; and Achilles on Skyros. Works in metal have also been found among Macedonian grave goods: chief among them are the hater of Dhervens — its main body bearing images in relief of Dionysos, Ariadne and the Maenads, while four figurines sit on the shoulder of the vase — and the pieces found in the tomb said to be that of Philip II at Vergina, in particular a plaque from a golden quiver showing the sack of a city (one woman is taking refuge near a divine statue while another woman and her baby are trying to escape).

In spite of all this, most goldsmith’s work has been lost, since it was made of precious metal and easily melted down. The few remaining pieces are enough to give invaluable evidence of the skill and quality of their execution. But there are not enough of them for us to judge their relationship with the rest of Greek sculpture, and thus their banality or perhaps, conversely, their originality and creativity. There is nothing improbable about this last idea. The marble Nemesis of Agorakritos in the temple of Rhamnons holds a phiale decorated with negro heads like the one from Panagjurist, was the sculptor copying a type of existing phiale, or was he providing the goldsmiths with an original model? In any case, there were goldsmiths whose names the historians of antiquity saw fit to preserve, such as the famous Mys, and above all Myron, both of whom were known as the authors of large statues, and after all, we have only to read the description of the throne of the Zeus of Olympia to be persuaded that it was not far from goldsmith’s work to chryselephantine statuary.

THE FREESTANDING RELIEF

Relief was not solely architectural; it was also common on freestanding stelai, but the two genres differ in several respects. In architectural relief, the frieze offered a ready— made location did not need anything to fix it in place, but it did impose the constraints of adaptation to a predetermined frame. Moreover, the subjects of architectural relief were all drawn from legend or, very rarely, from the contemporary history of Greece. Gonversely, an independent stele needed a base to stand on, but its dimensions were variable, depending on the requirements of the imagery, as we can see in funerary stelai in particular. As for location and iconography, they depended on the function of the relief

The headings of political inscriptions make up the smallest category. From the fifth century onwards there was an established and constantly developing custom of engraving decrees, treaties between allies, etc., on marble stelai displayed to the public (like a poster permanently displayed). The text, often very long, was obviously the main thing, and is usually found on its own. Sometimes, however, it is preceded by a vignette in relief, like a pictorial title. A relief above a decree issued by the Athenians in 405 in honour of the Samian ambassadors shows Athena and Hera, the patron goddesses of Athens and Samos, shaking hands; in 450, Athena and Parthenos appear at the head of a treaty of alliance between Athens and Neapolis, their respective cities; in 336, a law against tyranny is engraved below a relief showing Democracy crowning the People (Demos), and so on.