Silver And Ceramics Of Roman Sculpture Art
Sunday, September 26, 2010 at 11:28 PM | 0 comments  
SILVER AND CERAMICS

An archaeological find such as the Boscoreale. Treasure, probably buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 69 AD and now in the Louvre, is ample proof of the high quality of Roman silverware. The luxurious items were for the domestic use of people with the means to purchase heavy tableware in such prestigious material. The carafes, vases and salt cellars were hidden in haste. They are decorated in relief, and one cup, now destroyed, bore a scene of homage to Augustus. A similar hoard, unearthed at Hildesheim and now in Berlin, tends to indicate the absence of silversmiths’ workshops in these regions. The sixty or so pieces may well have been looted from a number of smaller collections in Italy. The delicate ornamental motifs of griffins, putti and foliage which completely cover the surface of the bowls and other vessels are proof of a very close relationship with the monumental art of the Augustan period, in particular the paintings and stuccowork of the Villa Farnesina. This type of silverware was also an important influence on ceramicists, who appear to have imitated it, particularly at Arezzo. The repoussé technique in vogue until the mid-first century AD, gradually gave way to casting. Gallo-Roman workshops, for instance, used the latter technique almost exclusively. Then, during the late third century, repoussé decoration seems to have made a comeback and became the standard technique in the late Empire. To this period belong silver caskets with pagan and Christian motifs, boxes and reliquaries, ewers or oinochoes (wine—jugs) and flasks. Plates continued to be east, and were sometimes decorated using the niello engraving technique. Among the characteristic artefacts of this period are the silver ewer owned by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Louvre oinochoe, which is decorated with hunting scenes, animals and leaf patterns. The motifs arc akin to those found in fourth- century mosaics. The links between the different media are worth emphasizing in this context.

As well as silver, pottery was widely used for household purposes. We have already seen how terracotta was sometimes used as a substitute material for small—format sculptures, architectural features, busts and portraits. But, in Roman times, it was ceramics that accounted for mass production in this field. Everyday pottery was made in various styles: with a black or brown glaze, particularly for drinking vessels; with a golden glint to it, reminiscent of a metal finish; with the inner surfaces in red or brown; with a polished, slip finish; or in a more basic style, with neither slip nor colour, for cooking purposes. Roman pottery was produced from moulds, with relief decoration reflecting the period, region, technique and workshop.

Towards the middle of the first century BC, black-glaze pottery, which had been produced in many local styles throughout the Mediterranean region, disappeared and was replaced by “Arretine” ware (terra sigillata), the essential characteristics of which were its fine, glossy surface and a colour ranging from deep orange to cherry red. The potters of Arretium (modern Arezzo) specialized in this fine tableware, which was manufactured in imitation of silverware. The decoration was generally limited to stamped relief motifs or incisions made directly in the clay, but some forms, such as bowls, craters and cups, were figured or ornamented with more complex scenes. Pottery of this kind was famous in ancient times. In the middle of the first century AD, Northern Italian and Gaulish imitations began to compete effectively with the Arretine ware, before being overtaken in their turn by a lighter orange tableware from North Africa. Roman ceramics are, of course, a study in themselves. It is only their iconography and certain decorative reliefs that interest us in our study of sculpture proper.

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Bronze Work Of Roman Sculpture Art
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 10:25 AM | 0 comments  
BRONZE WORK OF ROMAN SCULPTURE ART

The term bronze covets a number of copper-based alloys. In Roman times, the word aes was used for both copper and bronze, which is explained by the fact that adding another metal to copper improves its properties without changing its nature. For technical and economic reasons, there was a tendency to add more or less lead, which somewhat reduced the strength of the resulting alloy. The practice was nonetheless common, as it allowed the metal to be cast at lower temperatures, and made it flow more freely. Roman bronzes were therefore alloys of copper, tin, lead and sometimes zinc.

According to Polybius, who is quoted by Strabo, copper, lead and silver mines were intensively exploited by a large labour force. In the Republican era, mines were leased by the State. The Spanish mines supplied ingots to the whole Roman world. Bronze was used for many purposes: tableware, luxury household items, machinery, tablets of laws, architectural decoration, portraits of important people and statues to the gods. However, many bronze artefacts have not survived, partly owing to corrosion, but more often because they were melted down and recast at a later date. The value of the material and the unlimited scope for recycling it explains why so many works have disappeared. Some, of course, were transformed into bronze coins. In Classical times, bronze portraits and statues were in fact just as common as those made of stone or marble.

The recent discovery, near Cape Miseno, of an equestrian statue of Domitian, subsequently transformed into a portrait of Nerva, may be linked to the report of Dio Cassius, who states that, so the late second century AD, Didius lulianus refused the golden statue the Senate had decided to erect so his honour in these terms: “Give me a statue of bronze, which will last. I see that all the gold and silver statues in honour of my predecessors have been destroyed, while those made of bronze are still standing.” But Dio adds: “He was wrong, because the bronze statue that was dedicated to him, as he had desired, was, in its turn, destroyed after his fall.”

On the whole, bronze was little used for funerary portraits, but was very popular for commemorative statues erected in public places. The difference in price between bronze and marble statues was due mainly to the greater technical risks involved in casting bronze, whereas the marble carver’s task was more or less routine.

Examination of imperial statues shows that, after casting, bronze was often gilded, which increased its prestige. Recent restoration work has revealed traces of the layer of gold applied to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, formerly on the Capitoline. Of the prestigious statues executed in bronze, we might mention the Capitolinc She- Wolf, the Head, of Brutus in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the statue in the Museo delle Terme often believed to represent a Hellenistic sovereign (though in fact a likeness of Titus Quinctius Flaminius), the “Orator” in the Archaeological Museum in Florence, and a large number of imperial portraits. Whole groups of statues were sometimes executed in bronze, for instance the group of male and female figures and horses found at Cartoecto, now in the Ancona Museum. Given the large number of surviving imperial portraits from the provinces, workshops must have operated in quite far-flung places, a supposition confirmed by examination of the portrait of Hadrian recently acquired by the Louvre.

Though denying, directly or indirectly, from large-scale official sculpture, bronze statuettes were more or less mass produced in many regions. Study of those produced in an important legionary centre such as Carnuntum sheds light on the tastes and beliefs of the soldiery, trade in the region, workshops and imports. The groop of statuettes found in 1830 at Montorio, near Verona, is suggestive of a small household shrine in which Jupiter was the chief deity, surrounded by many other figures. The small bronze statuette from the Colomb Collection at Sistéron reveals that there was a trade in small—format replicas intended purely for the pleasure of the purchaser, in this case a fine new reproduction of the Farnese Antinous.

From Late Antiquity, fewer bronze statues, busts and portraits have survived. Instead, the material was used for utilitarian objects of various kinds: harnesses, tableware, weapons, knives and buckles. lo the religious field, bronze was used for many fine liturgical items; examples of these arc suspended and processional crosses, censers, vases and communion plates.

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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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