Greek&Roman ART

Roman Art Under Constantine

2010-10-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

The term “Constantinian” is used to describe official manifestations of the arts during the final three-quarters of the fourth century. The finest architectural developments and public projects intended for propaganda purposes were primarily urban in character. Towns underwent a gradual transformation, and although the forum continued to be the focus of urban life, pagan temples were slowly replaced by Christian buildings. Not all public buildings were intended for Christian purposes, however. In Rome, the great civic basilica begun by Maxentius and completed by Constantine epitomizes the new official architecture of Late Antiquity. Built on a rise, it consisted of a nave and lateral aisles of monumental proportions. The imposing central nave (250 x 80 feet, and ii s feet high) was roofed with a groin vault resting on eight columns of Proconnessian marble. The influence of this building on the great Christian basilicas has often been noted.

In the monumental apse at the west end of the building was erected a colossal statue of Constantine, of which only the head (8’/2 feet high), a hand, an arm and a few other fragments have survived. The statue might serve to represent the entire era. It depicted the Emperor seated on a throne, wearing the paludamentum, his raised right hand holding a sceptre, which (if Eusebius is to be believed) was topped by a cross. The Christian Emperor had been elevated to almost supernatural status, dominating mere mortals by the sheer size of his image. The statue also defined the stylistic features of Constantinian portrait use: a renewed Classicism of rigorous stamp, which was to influence many private portraits, particularly those carved on sarcophagi.

The vestiges of other major buildings mm the brief reign of Maxentius can still be seen in Rome, notably the original circular temple dedicated to the deified Romulus in the Forum and his own palace on the Via Appia. Palace architecture is particularly well illustrated by Diocletian’s palace at Split. Although it antedates the Constantinian period proper, this palace is representative of a form of residential architecture in which monumental and decorative sculpture were important elements. Built around the year 300 on the Dalmatian coast near Salonae, the complex was intended as a retreat for the Emperor when he abdicated, five years later. It is based on the rectangular plan of a castrum, with towers at the corners and flanking the gateways, and a great peristyle dominating the residential apartments overlooking the sea. The palace at Split is generally conservative in design, blending the forms of a military camp with borrowings from the great imperial palaces of Rome. Other sumptuous palaces of this kind are known to have been built at Antioch, Constantinople, and for also semi—private use at Piazza Armerina in Sicily.

The official sculpture of the Tetrarchic period finds typical expression in the Tetrarchs Group from Constantinople, carved in red porphyry in the early fourth century and now incorporated into the south-facing façade of St Mark’s, Venice. In Thessalonica, the imperial capital of Galerius, a whole new residential quarter was built around the Emperor’s palace and the circus. At the head of the street leading to the Tetrarch’s circular mausoleum was erected a triumphal arch, its supporting pillars decorated with historiated scenes. Two of these pillars, depicting Galerius’s military campaigns in 297, have survived. Four horizontal registers separated by striking decorative bands are carved, on the north—east, with battle scenes and, on the south—west, with more scenes of the same type alternating with historical and allegorical imagery. At one point in the story, Galerius and Diocletian are shown performing sacrifice at the start of the second stage of the war. The final reliefs mark the end of the campaign, culminating in Galerius’s adventus and triumph in 303 AD. Strongly influenced by the Hellenism of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Arch of Galersus bears witness to the eclipse of Rome by the new imperial capital cities in the early fourth century, and the emergence of new forms of abstract and symbolic thought.

To celebrate Constantine’s victory over Maxentius in 312, on the occasion of his decennalia in 355 the Roman Senate and people had a triumphal arch erected at the foot of the Palatine. It consisted of a triple gateway with freestanding columns, a model that had been used several times before. The Arch of Constantine is the repository not only of an important group of reliefs from the first quarter of the fourth century, but also of many older works: eight statues of Dacians from Trajan’s reign, which stand atop the columns, eight medallions from Hadrian’s time, eight reliefs from the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and the great upper frieze from Trajan’s era. Contemporary with the construction of the Arch itself are the circular reliefs representing the sun and moon on the east and west ends, the eight imperial busts of the smaller openings, the reliefs of victories and trophies carved on the plinths of the columns, the divinities carved on the keystones of the arches, the river gods of the side arches, and the victories and seasons of the central area. Most important of all is the historical frieze which, following a pattern set by the arches of Titus and Septimius Severus in Rome and that of Trajan at Benevento, runs above the side arches and continues at mid-height around the ends of the monument. This frieze is rightly considered to represent the ideology and style of the period.

Symptomatic of the formal canon of Late Antiquity (which tended to distort the Classical ideal) is the complete absence of elements derived from the Hellenistic tradition. There is also a certain irregularity in the composition and a lack of realism in the way the figures are arranged. The atmosphere of the imperial court is expressed in new iconographical renderings, with the Emperor depicted full-face in the centre, flanked by figures who seem to exist only in relation to his person. The Emperor’s new status as a Christian prince, also reflected in consular diptychs of the period, is here combined with an obvious intention to lay claim to the Roman imperial heritage by the redeployment of earlier sculptural reliefs.

A certain unity of style is to be found throughout the Mediterranean region, in official monuments of the kind we have been describing, in the decoration of such luxurious private residences as those at Piazza Armerina in Sicily or Centcelles near Tarragona, and in the portraits of those who feature in the iconography of Christian basilicas (Aquileia). During the first half of the fourth century, even on sarcophagi, there is a tendency towards portraits with bulging eyes, roundish heads and short hair, Later on, and even during the first half of the fifth century, this style is abandoned in favour of a rather flaccid form of Classicism. A good example is the statue of the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, now in the Louvre.

Art and The Decline Of The Roman Empire

2010-10-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

ART AND THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Nowadays, we tend to use the term Late Antiquity to describe the final period of the Roman Empire and the changes associated with it. Although the final centuries, from the reign of the Severans until the ultimate fall of the Western Empire in the fifth century, are traditionally seen as a time of progressive decadence, the restructuring undertaken by Diocletian (284—305), and then by Constantine (307—337), signalled a clean break with the period of invasions that had characterized the second half of the third century. Their reigns saw a decisive centralization of power as well as the development of an imperial court, not only in Rome but also in Trier, Milan, Sirmium, Constantinople and even Ravenna. Constantine brought the Tetrarchic period to an end by making Christianity the official religion of the Empire. Ecclesiastical institutions very soon came to play an important role in urban life, as the episcopal form of church government became established. The Church sought to promote its image and Christianize the arts, including public and private monumental sculpture.

The Third Centuty Of Roman Sculpture Art

2010-10-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

THE THIRD CENTURY OF ROMAN SCULPTURE ART

Under the Severans, from Septimius Severus (193—212) to Alexander Severus (222—235), Rome continued to play a central role in the cultural policy of the emperors. Major monuments were built. Foreign works of art, mainly of Asian origin, continued to be imported, and artists flocked to the city, particularly from Hellenistic centres. There was a notable import trade in sculpted marble sarcophagi. A wreck from the first half of the third century, found off Taranto, was carrying a cargo of twenty-four such items from the Eastern Mediterranean. The carvings on sarcophagi were imbued with a new spirituality, combining symbolism, mythology and oriental religion, and thus preparing the way for Christian themes. In the private iconography of sarcophagi, we now find the same relationship as had previously existed between the public figure and his portrait in official sculpture, with the deceased often represented taking part in hunting or battle scenes. The entire third century is rich in fine sarcophagi. The Ludovisi sarcophagus, for instance, at the Museo delle Terme, which dates from the early part of the century, features a true likeness of the deceased in the guise of a victorious warrior. At the same time, there was a vogue for pastoral or bucolic scenes covering all sides of the sarcophagus, which was another step on the road to Christian iconography.

Two outstanding works of public sculpture survive from the Severan period. The first, the gateway known as the Silversmiths’ Arch, was erected in 204 AD at the entrance to the Forum Boarium, the former business centre of Republican Rome. The monument in many ways anticipates Late Antique sculpture: the emperor and empress, who occupy almost all the available space, are depicted frontally, without depth, while foliage elements play an important part in the decoration. The chief monument of this period is, nevertheless, the Arch of Septimius Sevens, erected in the Roman Forum in 203 AD. It consists of three openings framed by free—standing columns on imposing bases, and an uninterrupted upper storey bearing the inscription. The four large historical reliefs above the lateral arches tell of Septimius Severus’s campaigns in Mesopotamia. These panels continue the Roman tradition of historical relief sculpture. According to Herodian, the military scenes were, inspired by paintings the Emperor sent to the Senate. Stylistically, they exhibit definite links with the reliefs of the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, particularly the latter. However, the carved subjects are more isolated, in keeping with the general trend of official sculpture in the first quarter of the third century. Public relief sculpture and private sarcophagi were now developing on parallel lines and drawing on similar subject matter. The Palazzo Mattei sarcophagus, carved with hunting scenes, shows the direction things were taking in the second quarter of the century. It is sarcophagi of this type that enable us to follow the various stylistic trends of the period. In imperial portraits, too, we can chart a gradual liberation from Classical canons and at the same time the emergence of a new physical and psychological individualism.

During the third century, the provinces began to evolve sculptural forms of their own. Independence was in the air, encouraging the development of local styles, which were eventually to influence the art of Rome itself The materials and techniques used by local craftsmen were an important factor in the process of differentiation. From the time of Gallienus (253—268) until the Tetrarchy, Roman art abandoned the Hellenistic tradition and forms evolved in a new climate of artistic freedom. Not until the rime of Constantine did the Empire rediscover its unity this time under the influence of Christianity.

The Augustan Myth Of Roman Empire

2010-10-10T22:57:00.000-07:00

THE AUGUSTAN MYTH

The emperors imposed new organs of government and a centralized administration, with themselves as head of the army and Pontifex Maximus. On the accession of Augustus (27 BC—14 AD), a new sense of optimism swept away the nightmare of the civil wars. Augustus announced his determination to re-establish Roman order

and encouraged literature and the arts. The result of this new centralizing force was an impressive unity of form. There was a clear intention to assimilate the myths of Rome’s origins in such works of art as the Ara Pacis or Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid, which presents the exploits of its Trojan hero as prefiguring those of Augustus himself. In architecture, Augustus transformed the city of Rome, making extensive use of marble and surpassing the achievements of Julius Caesar by building his own forum exalt the gens lulia.

The statue of Augustus wearing a cuirass, from Livia’s suburban villa at Prima Porta on the Via Flaminia (Vatican), shows the Emperor in short military dress, paludamentum over his left arm and lance in hand. His right hand makes an energetic gesture as he calls for silence. In carving the figure, the sculptor clearly drew inspiration from famous models such as the Doryphorus of Polyclitus. This portrait epitomizes the new idealizing tendency characteristic of Augustan Classicism.

The Prima Porta statue is particularly noteworthy for the decorative reliefs on the Emperor’s cuirass. The composition is dominated by a personification of the sky, which hovers over the chariot of the Sun god as he follows the figures of Aurora and Phosphorus. Tellus, god of the Earth, accompanied by two putti and flanked by Apollo riding a griffin and Diana on a hind, occupies the lower part of the cuirass. The middle register is taken up by a highly symbolic scene which defines not only the ideology of Empire but the entire propaganda effort of Augustus’s reign. The king of the Parthians, Phraates IV, is shown restoring the standards lost by Crassus. He hands them to a Roman general, probably Tiberius, who pacified Germany and Pannonia in the years 12—8 BC. This gives us the clue to the date of the statue or its model. The statue therefore emphasizes Augustus’s support for Tiberius and exemplifies an emerging Neo-Classical style with an admixture of Neo—Atticism, evident in the reliefs of the cuirass.

The greatest, though not earliest, work of the Augustan age is the Ara Pacis, an altar dedicated to the Pax Augusta. This monument best sums up the prevailing sense of the sacred and the universal power at the heart of the imperial idea. On the fourth of July of the year 13 BC, the Roman Senate voted for the erection of an altar devoted to the Pax Augusta, on the Campus Martins, to celebrate Augustus’s return from Gaul and the Iberian peninsula. It took four years to complete. Fragments of the monument were discovered over a long period between the sixteenth century and excavations carried out in 1903 and 1937—38. The work has since been reconstructed from the recovered fragments, with aid from other figurative sources, particularly coins, though not on the original site. The Ara Pacis is rectangular in plan, with two wide doorways on the shorter sides. The altar proper is at the centre of the monument, which stands on a podium and was decorated, inside and out, with monumental reliefs separated by pilasters carved with candelabra of foliage. On the outside, the decoration is arranged in two horizontal bands, the lower adorned with foliage and acanthus motifs, the upper done in figurative relief The four panels flanking the doors are sculpted with mythical and allegorical scenes, while the longer sides feature two processions. The smaller panels display a general form of symbolism, in which peace leads to the prosperity of Rome. The processional scenes make a close association between the official aspects of religion, with its priests, and imperial power as mediated by the family o( Augustus. The procession is led by Agrippa, the principal heir of the dynastic line, who died in 52 BC. Identification of the members of Augustus’s household has raised a great deal of controversy over the years. At times, the extremely formal processions have been interpreted in very realistic and objective ways; at others, they have been viewed as idealistic presentations of the dynasty and the problems surrounding the succession.

The Ara Pacis is a monument which, in the style of its figured reliefs and the decorative power of its friezes, exemplifies the long-awaited independence of Roman art from Greek models. The Classicism of this period is marked by a predilection for marble and by innovations in form: relief sculpture itself, perspective, a sense of space and depth, and the detailed treatment of clothing. The impressive unity of inspiration and technique one feels in these works reflects an aristocratic approach to art, at the service of political power. In the Ara Pacis, we discern an emerging taste for the Neo—Attic style, which the Roman elites favoured to the point of making it an essential feature of official art. The spiritual and political tranquillity of this period of peace, replacing the anguish and dangers of earlier times, is evidenced by an eschewing of eclecticism and the choice of a new style pregnant with the Greek spirit. It marks one of the high points of Roman art. It is hardly surprising that historians of Neo—Classical art have given special emphasis to this period, although they have not always noticed its specifically Neo—Attic components. Its novel elements include the juxtaposition of figured and purely decorative friezes — a practice the Greeks would never have consented to — and the difference in style between the processional scenes and the smaller panels. This lack of organic and structural links, unheard of in the Greek world, betrays the Italo-Etruscan background against which the new style developed, drawing its inspiration from the artistic traditions of the Hellenistic kingdoms and from that of consular and Republican Rome.

A similar overlapping of Hellenistic models and local roots is apparent in the reliefs of the altar of the Vicomagistri, (Vatican) mentioned earlier. This continuous frieze depicting a religious procession was reconstructed from fragments discovered in 1939. Thought to date from the third or fourth decade of the first century AD, the frieze exhibits the same overall unity of style as the Ara Pacis, with similar inter—relationships between the figures. The presentation of foreground and background makes for a more realistic effect, and the portraits are considered to be true likenesses.

Closely related to these two monuments is another altar, the Ara Pietatis, voted by the Senate in 22 AD, but not dedicated until AD, by the Emperor Claudius. So close is the resemblance between these and the earlier reliefs, there is on doubt that the Augustan style outlived the Emperor himself. But official ideology did gradually change, as is evident if we compare the unreal, almost timeless, quality of the reliefs for Augustus’s altar with the very precise topographical indications of the Ara Pietatis, which harks back to an older tradition of triumphal painting. Neo-Atticism gradually gave way to the Neo-Hellenism that was to represent the hallmark of the first century. It is epitomized by the desire to imitate the works of the great Hellenistic courts in small artefacts of monumental conception, such as, for instance, the Gemma Augustea (Vienna) or the Grand Camée de France (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris).

The Republican Era Of Roman Sculpture

2010-10-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

THE REPUBLICAN ERA OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

We describe as “Republican” the art of the period between the foundation of Rome in 753 BC and the accession of Augustus. Artistic developments in Rome itself can be deduced from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were spectacularly preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Consideration of this period raises the thorny issue of the origins of Roman art, and particularly its relationship with the art of the Etruscans. The problem is epitomized by the Capitoline She-Wolf, if we accept it as the product of an Etruscan workshop or of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy, cast during the fifth century, or even the early fourth century BC. The bronze head of the Capitoline “Brutus”, mythical founder of the Republic, once belonged to a complete statue and ii believed to date from the first quarter of the third century BC. The steady gaze, strong features, power and sobriety of this piece bespeak a well—established Central-Italic tradition of individualized portraiture. This tradition was also nourished by works of art brought to Rome as war booty from the towns of Magna Graecia and Etruria. The foundation was being laid for the eclecticism of later Roman art.

The city of Rome, whose name is first recorded in the late fourth century on the Ficoroni Cut (in the Villa Giulia), was soon graced with important monuments, such as the Regia, a mid-sixth-century religious building which stood in the Forum, and numerous temples such as those in the Area Sacra beside the Largo Argentina. The basilica gradually developed as a rectangular building with a number of side aisles. The later Republican period saw the erection of the temples in the Forum Holitorium, urban development of the southern areas of the Campus Martius, and the building of the Tabularium on the Capitoline.

One of the oldest works known to us, which we must define as pre-Roman, was the great hypogeum of the Scipios on the Via Appia. Originally, it consisted of a large square chamber containing the principal tomb — now in the Vatican Museum at its centre. Two tufa heads from this complex are akin to works produced in southern Etruria in the late third and early second centuries BC. Of similar tradition are the reliefs of the Via del Mare procession, which can be seen in the Palazzo dei Conservatori.

The new social classes which emerged during the final prosperous stage of the Republic commissioned sculptors to work on various projects. The most characteristic monument of this new trend, possibly the first public relief sculpture, is the altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, fragments of which are preserved in the Munich and Louvre museums. The reliefs graced the base of a temple to Mars or Neptune in the Circus Flaminius, where the church of San Salvatore in Campo now stands. There were also statues, since lost, of Neptune, Amphitrite, Achilles and Nereids, which, according to Pliny, were made by one Skopas (not to be confused with the renowned sculptor of that name from Paros). Three sides are decorated with a marine procession celebrating the marriage of Neptune and Amphitrite, depicted in a chariot drawn by tritons. The fourth side shows animals being presented, in a scene which is certainly sacrificial in character, and yet contains elements of something quite different. Beside the altar stand the god Mars and the Censor with his assistants. This relief, which also owes something to a military environment, inaugurates a new type of composition centred on the censor. Though they all date from around 110 BC, the reliefs differ in style. The marine procession derives from a Hellenistic and Neo—Attic tradition, and is symbolic rather than realistic in content. The sacrificial scene is considered to be ,the starting point of Roman relief sculpture as we know it.

The use of commemorative reliefs spread rapidly during the first century AD. Examples are the frieze of the Arch of Augustus at Susa (Piedmont) and, in Rome, the base of the altar of the Vicomagistri, erected under Tiberius. Funerary reliefs, of the plebeian or popular kind described earlier, also became very popular in many Italian cities. Some tombs were commissioned by merchants or craftsmen who had grown wealthy, and they tended to embellish their last resting place in monumental fashion. Such tombs are often decorated with scenes from their working life or with funerary banquets.

The culmination of all these developments is to be seen in the frieze depicting preparations for a triumphal procession from the Temple of Apollo Sosianus (Palazzo dei Conservatori). It is based on the triumph celebrated by Sosius in 34 BC, though it was not actually sculpted until twenty or so years later. This relief, like the procession from an altar base which was discovered beneath the Cancelleria building (Vatican Museum), leads on to the mature Roman narrative style which found its fullest official expression on the lateral walls of Augustus’s Ara Pacis.

The attempt to fix a given moment in the life of an individual or group, in functions both public and private, is also evident in Republican portraiture. There is a clean break with the standardized portraits of Etruscan and Italic origin. The supposed portrait of Sulla (Venice) epitomizes the new trend in politically—motivated patrician portraiture, which was to become an essential instrument of propaganda under the new senatorial aristocracy.

Silver And Ceramics Of Roman Sculpture Art

2010-09-26T23:28:00.000-07:00

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.

Bronze Work Of Roman Sculpture Art

2010-09-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

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.

The Capital Of Roman Sculpture

2010-08-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Sculptors And Patrons Of Roman Sculpture

2010-08-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Religion And Politics Of Roman Sculpture

2010-08-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

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.

The Historical Relief Of Roman Art

2010-08-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

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.

The Portrait of Roman Realism

2010-08-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

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.

DECORATION HOUSE AND ITS OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

2010-08-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Iconography Of Roman Sculpture

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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.

ORIGINALS AND COPIES OF ROMAN SCULPTURE

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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

The New Functions Of Sculpture Of Roman

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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.

THE ROMAN ART

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THE ROMAN ART

INTRODUCTION

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.

The difficulty experienced by Roman art in achieving a purely aesthetic, unfettered form of expression, together with ha dependence on social and political context, are sometimes regarded as having prevented artists from flourishing freely in the Roman world. Artists seemed always constrained by social and religious expectations, to the depiction of political or judicial activities, the sacred function of art, and of gapes and spectacles: that is, scenes of everyday life.

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.

THE LATE-CLASSICAL RENAISSANCE IN GREEK ARTS

2010-08-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

THE LATE-CLASSICAL RENAISSANCE IN GREEK ARTS

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.

The Chimaera is not an isolated case. Throughout the first half of the fourth century BC, smaller votive bronzes from northern Etruria and utilitarian items, found mainly in the plain of the Po, were still heavily influenced by the Severe style, which sculptors frequently and not unsuccessfully combined with elements of the Classical style. This reflects the persistent fondness of local craftsmen for the prestigious international style widespread in all Greek or Hellenized regions in the previous century. Thus in a society still governed by the rigid norms of a very closed aristocracy, such as the cities in the heart of northern Etruria during the first half of the fourth century BC, funerary sculpture, the only form of the art practised in these conservative zones, still oscillated between traditional allegiance to the almost “courtly” taste for the Severe style and the attraction of the new Classical style. This. is shown in certain traditional products, such as the cinerary statues from Chiusi ,carved in limestone, that were made in provincial workshops. They tended, as we have already seen with the terracottas from the Via S. Leonardo in Orvieto, to retain the old formulae fur those parts that carried meaning (face, hair, general anatomy) while reserving the new elements for details such as draperies that had less influence on the effect of august majesty that it was the statue’s ideological purpose to convey. The same process is also apparent in larger—scale bronze works, probably produced in workshops in7the same Chiusi region, such as the cover of the cinerary urn with a reclining figure from Perugia. It is a refined piece, though mannered in some respects, particularly in the rendering of the anatomy, which is relatively unstructured and located precisely halfway between the two artistic languages.

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

2010-08-04T22:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Sculpture still embellished architecture, but now that buildings of non-traditional types were being constructed it was not confined to its traditional locations, and it presents new subjects. In addition to the usual type of statuary column, atlantis or caryatid, we have statues leaning back against columns, like the tritons on the Odeon of

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.

Marble sarcophagi with reliefs in the Creek style belonging to the Classical period have been discovered in the necropolis of Sidon, as described above, but up to the end of the Hellenistic period this kind of tomb was alien to the funerary customs of Greece. It was very common in Italy under the Empire, however, and its appearance in Imperial Greece, mainly but not exclusively in Attica, must be due to Roman influence.

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.

Thematically there is an obvious break with the funerary stele: while the latter often showed a figure of the dead person, the subjects carved on the sides of sarcophagi arc no longer concerned with him. It is usual, of course, to say that they are “funerary symbolism”. Space does not permit discussion of this problem here; we merely observe that the subjects depicted on sarcophagi arc not peculiar to a funerary context, their relationship to death and eschatology is often tenuous, and above all no texts either mention the symbolic parallels assumed by modem commentators or suggest that the choice of subjects reflected a symbolic agenda.

Finally, an important feature of Greek sculpture of the Imperial period is the place occupied by the portrait. The gap between the powerful and the powerless was still

growing, for reasons already present in the Hellenistic period and now even stronger, and the whole Mediterranean world was ruled by a single monarch, the leader known to us as the Emperor from his military title of imperator. As a result, portraits of two kinds proliferated. First there were portraits of private individuals; for instance, those of the immensely wealthy Herodes Atticus and his entourage constitute a gallery in themselves. Then there were portraits of the Emperor and his family, or even, in the case of Hadrian, of his favourite Antinous, of whom we have a large number of effigies. Like the Hellenistic royal portrait, the Imperial portrait is used to emphasize certain aspects of a personality or illustrate “invisible” characteristics. Physical strength is shown as• “heroic nudity”, and victorious power is displayed by the wearing of armour when the leader figures as imperator. The portrait can even depict its subject as a god, for instance when Antinous is shown with the attributes of Dionysos.

Technically, the execution is very uneven, but we need only look at the anonymous portrait No. 459 in the National Museum of Athens to see that not all skills had been lost. There are two notable novelties: the appearance of the bust alongside the statuary portrait, and in the statuary portrait itself the frequent habit of making head and body separately. The head ended in a tenon which fitted into a depression made for it between the shoulders. Largely the result of professional skill—sharing, this device also had its economic advantages: when a new ruler came to power, all you had to do was replace the head instead of making a whole new statue.

The statuary portrait still stood in the open air on a simple base, but now it was found in new locations. A monumental fountain, the Nymphaeum built by Herodes Atticus at Olympia, is also an exhibition of portraits of his own and the Imperial families, and at Side a small building was built especially to hold a statue of Vespasian. Busts are more in the nature of indoor sculpture. Finally, the imago clipeata (“image in a shield”) allowed the inclusion of the portrait in architectural sculpture, for instance the portrait of Marcus Aurelius on the pediment of the great Propylaea of Eleusis.

There was thus a great deal of Greek sculpture and indeed of Greek art in general during the Imperial period, and it is particularly interesting to see if it is closer to earlier Greek art than to non—Greek art of its own time, namely, “Roman art”. Although Greece was now institutionally entirely Roman, it is quite possible that Roman influence was not felt everywhere, either simply because of the routine preservation of old customs, or because of deliberate resistance. Linguistically, it is an established fact that Greek was hardly influenced by Latin at all, and it is worth seeing what happened on the artistic level.

In sculpture, the use of the sarcophagus, quite foreign to native tradition, was a Roman import, and statuary was frequently put to the service of the power of Rome, but the traditional taste for earlier works and an earlier style retained its strength in Greece not least because it was now widespread in Italy too. This conservatism is even more marked in other arts, for instance architecture, which continued to use large monolithic blocks of unmortared stone rather than systematically adopting the method of building with bricks faced with marble. In mosaics too, both the design and the subject matter were far from adopting all the innovations of the west.

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.

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD AND HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE

2010-08-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD AND HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE

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.

From now on, however, the phenomenon described above as “the invention of art” encouraged reverence for works of the past, and nourished preoccupations which were the very opposite of innovative, so that Hellenistic sculpture became an art with two contrasting aspects. Specialists have tried to discern “baroque”, “rococo” and ‘classic” tendencies in it, with varying degrees of success. It is more useful to recognize that art was dominated by the competition, unknown in previous centuries, between contemporary creativity and a continuing awareness of earlier artistic works.

Although it is almost certain that the capitals of the new kingdoms were centres of contemporary creative art, it is still impossible to determine their respective shares. For instance, let us take the role of Alexandria, once believed so important that for a long time all Hellenisric art was described as Alexandrian. In fact, hardly anything has been found in the capital of the Ptolemics apart from everyday items: no major works allow us to define a specific style. There is one outstanding exception among these capitals, the city of Pergamum. Excavations of the site have given us a great many sculptures, most important of all the two friezes on the Great Altar of Zeus, summarizing the somewhat short history of the recent Attalid dynasty. The smaller frieze tells the story of Telephos, a local hero of the time of the Trojan war appropriated by the kings of Pergamum as their ancestor, in clear defiance of the facts. The larger frieze shows a gigantomachy which, with a transfer of contemporary events to a legendary context similar to that occasioned by the Persian Wars in the fifth century, commemorates the great exploit of the Attalids, their victories over the Gauls or Galatians. Moreover, several ancient replicas almost certainly derive from the art of Pergamum, particularly those relating to battles with the Galatians: the Dying Gaul, the statue of a Gaul committing suicide after killing his wife, and the wounded Gaul of Dclos (who has recently recovered his

head and shoulders). But anything that could be said of the Pergamene style in view of these works could, it must be admitted, almost equally well be said of the Laocoon, suspected from literary records to come from Rhodes. Since the chronology of these works is no better established than their geographical origins and we have far fewer textual records than for the Classical period it will be more useful to concentrate on the principal characteristics of HellenistiC sculpture than to become entangled in the many hypotheses about regional styles and developments.

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.

Sculpture had never before been so concerned with particularities. Distinctions of age, only tentatively depicted in the preceding period, are now widespread. We find tiny children, created by sculptors who take care to distinguish their chubbiness from an adult anatomy, as we can see from the enigmatic Child with a Goose of Boethos. We find many statues of old people, and there is no reluctance to show the physical traces of old age in such works as the Drunken Old Woman, perhaps by Myron, a sculptor who shares his name with the author of the Diskobolos. The faces of Classical statues are uniformly ,beautiful; in Hellenistic art, facial differences are reflected portraiture and in small terracotta figures. In the latter, individualization is taken to extremes of ugliness. Less then, and in a less emphatic manner, ethnic distinctions appear: the Gaul Killing his Wife and the Dying Gaul have moustaches, while retaining the Greek style of heroic nudity”. The Dying Gaul also wears the Galatian torque round his neck. As for distinction of the sexes, present from the first in Greek sculpture, it is now extended to include the hermaphrodite!

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.

It might be expected that this liking for temporal singularity would go hand in hand with a taste for spatial
singularity, that the art of the fleeting moment would also be the act of individualized settings. While Classical painting and sculpture were almost universally reluctant to depict the background of a scene, it has often been thought that the representation of landscape was developed in Hellenistic art However, the landscape effects (in fact very restrained) in the frieze of Telephos on the Altar of Pergamum have been much exaggerated, and it has been wrongly thought that the “picturesque reliefs” of the Imperial period were Hellenistic, or at least derived from Hellenistic originals. If we confine ourselves to what we observe, we shall find that painted or sculptural landscape was a development of Roman art.

But whereas the Athenians of 480 BC made haste to bury the old sculptures of the Archaic Acropolis, instead of restoring them as something precious, and Plato thought the works of the great Daidalos would look ridiculous at a later date, during the Hellenistic period the creation of new works did not cancel out the prestige of earlier sculpture, just as the avant-garde movements of the nineteenth century co-existed with a concern to preserve older art.

Attention to the sculpture of the Classical period, works several centuries old, took two distinct forms, although in some cases we cannot decide which applies. First was what might be called academicism: that is, the production of new works as close to the old style as possible (although one can never entirely escape one’s own period). Such are the Victory of Samothrace, with her swirling garments in the wet drapery tradition; the Tralles Boy, about whom nothing is new but his cape (which inspired Cocteau); the Poseidon of Melos; the Agde Boy (if it is true that he derives from a Hellenistic original); and the Venus de Milo. Examples in relief work include the frieze of the Temple of Artemis Leucophryene at Magnesia on the Maeander. Second, there were straightforward copies of Classical originals, such as the fine replica of the Diadoumenos of Polyclitus found in a house on Delos which must have been abandoned in the first third of the first century BC. These replicas are usually spoken of as a means of gaining access to the great lost originals of Classicism, and they were considered froni that point of view earlier in this book, but it must not be forgotten that producing them was a major achievement of Hellenistic and later of Imperial art.

Hellenistic sculpture did not merely copy the Classical sculpture which immediately preceded it. Whereas the people of the fifth century had scorned the Archaic art of only a little earlier, at was now taken up again by a movement which was not, it is true, very widespread, and was basically confined to the first century and the early Imperial epoch. No specialist, of course, could mistake one of the works now described as Archaistic for a genuine Archaic sculpture of the sixth century; there are too many differences. None the less they display features alien to Classical and normal Hellenistic sculpture, such as the bard and curled hair-style of the herm of Delos, the hair and drapery of the bearded man carved on one of the sides of a Corinthian base, the attitude of the divinities walking in single file on the relief of Delos, where the figure of Hermes is bearded, as he had not been shown since the fifth century. All this can be explained only as imitation of much older works.

Hellenistic sculpture commonly refers back to earlier Greek’ art, but it did not exploit foreign art, although the Ptolemies and Seleucids had monuments in foreign styles on their territories. Although the people of the Hellenistic period were aware of geographic distinctions, as we can see from the coining of verbs meaning “to speak, to act, to live in the Greek, Sicilian, Egyptian, etc., manner”, in art they turned readily to what was old but almost never to what was exotic. In Egypt itself, of course, the Ptolemies commissioned temples in the traditional Pharaonic style such as the temple of Edfu, with statues and reliefs which an uninformed observer might think dated froth the times of the Rameses. Later on the Roman emperors did the same at Philae and Dendera. But the local style co-existed with art in the Greek traditions and did not merge with it, and almost no foreign influences infiltrated Greece itself. In depicting Serapis — a god who, it is true, was of recent origin and half Greek — Bryaxis gave him the appearance of a Zeus or Hades, and similarly the cult statue of the Temple of Isis on Delos (around a3o), is just a woman draped in the Greek fashion.

GREEK SCULPTURE OUTSIDE GREEK

2010-08-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

GREEK SCULPTURE OUTSIDE GREEK

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.

The Monument of the Harpies, probably built around the beginning of the fifth century at Xanthos in Lycia, is a tomb in the shape of a tower: a monolithic pillar some twenty feet in height, which is still standing, bore a funerary chamber, its external walls ornamented with reliefs which are now in the British Museum. The monument owes its conventional name to the relief on the north face:

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.

Still in Xanthos, but of the Classical period, the Nereid Monument is also a tomb, but of a different architectural type. It is certainly Classical, but its date is disputed: in the absence of any independent information, the sculptural style is our only clue. The building of the Monument is usually dated to the last third of the fifth century, but some scholars have put it as early as 460 or as late as 360 BC. Only the foundations remain in Xanthos itself the entire elevation was taken to the British Museum to be reassembled there. A raised stylobate bears a small Ionic temple with peristyle which formed the funerary chamber. It is profusely ornamented with sculpture. The stylobate, first, has two friezes, one above the other. The lower frieze, which is also the larger, presents a kind of pseudo-Amazonomachy with warriors shown naked in the Greek style, fighting enemies dressed in the Persian style. The upper frieze probably illustrates some military exploit of the occupant of the tomb, but with scenes which have no counterpart in the imagery of Greece itself the besieged are shown coming out from behind the crenellated wall of their city, and their surrender is received by the victorious dynast seated on a throne in the shade of a parasol. Then, above the stylobate and between the columns, come the twelve female statues with marine attributes who have been interpreted as Nereids, and who give this anonymous tomb its conventional name. The architrave depicts scenes of bear-hunting and boar-hunting, and a procession of people coming to pay tribute, while a fourth frieze, above the cella, depicts scenes of sacrifice and a funeral feast. The two pediments are also embellished: on the east, the main façade, the dynast and his wife sit enthroned among their court, and the west pediment depicts a scene of combat. The carved decoration is complemented by akroteria: those on the roof-ridge show abductions, those on the sides female figures. The imagery here is not as completely enigmatic as on the Monument of the Harpies; there can be no doubt that the scenes of war and surrender are meant to commemorate the dead man’s exploits but the eschatological references elude us for the same reasons as before, and reams have been written trying to explain why the twelve alleged “Nereids” were placed around a tomb.

Still in Lycia, and also dating from the second half of the fifth century, the Heroon of Trysa is another funerary monument. This is an enclosed building, of which the insides of the walls and the outside walls around the door were covered with reliefs which are now preserved in Vienna. Of about six hundred feet of frieze, only about one-eighth is lost, and at five hundred and eighty human figures arranged on two levels, one above the other, this is one of the largest sculptural ensembles to have come down to us from antiquity. Some of the subjects can be explained by the function of the building: dancers with calathi (baskets) on their heads frame the outside of the door, there are gods of Egyptian appearance playing music over the lintel, and scenes of banqueting and dancing. The rest of the decoration does not seem to be connected with the dead person’s earthly life, as in the Nereid Monument, but is borrowed from Greek mythology — an Amazonomachy, the Calydonsan Hunt, the story of the Seven Against Thebes, and above all the Trojan cycle. Some rather complicated hypotheses have been constructed in the effort to identify personal allusions. As in the Nereid Monument, and unlike most relief in Greece itself, these scenes also include depictions of the city walls.

The fourth monument is the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, which was counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Although it has now been destroyed and is reduced to a few fragments, its fame in its own day means that we have a good deal of information about its construction and appearance. Among other writings, there are two quite long passages by Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder. The Mausoleum was built for a Carian ruler called Mausolos — hence the name of his tomb, now in use as a common noun — who died in 353 BC, it was comniissioned by his wife Artemisia. She called in Greek artists, two architects and five sculptors: Skopas, Bryaxis, Timotheos and Leochares, who took charge of the decoration of the east, north, south and west sides respectively, and Pythis, creator of the marble quadriga which crowned the monument. Pliny adds some comments on its architecture which have been taken as guidelines for the countless reconstructions suggested in our own time: rectangular in plan, it had a colonnade of thirty-six columns holding up a pyramidal roof at an angle of twenty-four degrees. Plaques from a frieze still survive from the sculpture of the Mausoleum and are nowadays in the British Museum. They show an Amazonomachy, a centauromachy and a chariot race, and they continue to provide material for the common but futile game of making attributions. For no particular reason, one writer will attribute this piece or that to Skopas, while another prefers to see it as the work of Timotheos. We also still have some statues, including statues a long—haired, moustachcd man in oriental dress and of a woman, customarily called Mausolos and Artemisia, and there arc some twenty lions.

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

2010-08-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

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).

At first, the concentration of work in precious metals in Thrace and Macedonia during the Classical period makes it look as if it was peculiar to these regions, and we may even wonder if it is really Greek art. That would be to fall victim to a kind of archaeological optical illusion: the inventories of the sanctuaries on Delos, for instance, tell us that vessels of gold and silver were present there in great quantities. However, Greece itself consisted of small cities, usually under democratic rule, with citizens who were not particularly prosperous, particularly in the fourth century, and could not afford to build large private tombs. Hence, goldsmith’s work would have been found only in the temples, from which looters have long since stolen them. In Thrace and Macedonia, on the other hand, where tombs were much more elaborate both architecturally and in respect of the grave goods they contained, rich men might take precious items with them to the next world, and those items, better hidden in tombs than in temples, have more often been left for us to discover. The large percentage of goldsmith’s work found in excavations in northern Greece, therefore, is the predictable consequence of forms of conservation. However, it must be evidence not just of the wealth of this social group (a class not entirely absent from the south, judging by temple inventories), but also of the private luxury of an aristocratic class equipped to enjoy it in both life and death, which is something that southern Greece did not experience.

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 OF GREEK ART AND SCULPTURE

2010-08-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

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

In this respect, independent reliefs can he divided into three main categories of unequal extent, which share a common factor in the combination of visual images and writing: the political inscription, the votive relief and the funerary 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.

Pictorially, since the concern was to show conceptual and not tangible realities, this kind of relief employs either the effigy of a divinity symbolizing the city of which it is patron, or those personifications whose development in the statuary of the fifth and sixth centuries we have already discussed.

The agora in particular was the place for putting up stelai bearing political inscriptions, and they were sometimes erected in sanctuaries.

The cult images of Greek religion — images which occupied temples and to which sacrifices were made were statues, hardly ever reliefs, although reliefs predominated in some religions of eastern origin, ,such as Mithraism. Cult reliefs are therefore lacking, but there were many votive reliefs. The votive relief was one of the forms of eukhe, an offering of thanksgiving dedicated to a divinity in gratitude for favours received. This category must include the great relief dating from the middle of the fifth century and showing an important incident in the theology of Eleusis, with Demeter and Kore giving Triptolemos an ear of wheat, but it was chiefly at the end of the fifth century and during the fourth that votive reliefs became widespread, especially in sanctuaries of healing.

In votive reliefs, the image predominates; inscription may be altogether lacking or reduced to the names of the person or persons dedicating the offering and the divinity or divinities to whom it is dedicated. These divinities may be shown alone, like the first-century Isis Pelagia (“of the sea”), inventor of navigation, depicted in a relief on Delos which was no doubt offered by a seafarer saved from shipwreck. But very often the relief shows what would remain imaginary without it, a confrontation of gods and their worshippers in a representation breaking with the tradition of “isocephaly”: the Thracian goddess Bendis, and Asklepios and his family, tower more than a head above the human worshippers approaching them. The relief may even show a miracle in process: the sick ritually lay in the sanctuaries of Asklepios awaiting a cure, and a relief from the Asklepeion of Piraeus shows the god himself operating on a patient.

Obviously, votive reliefs stood in the sanctuaries of the gods to whom they had been offered.

Just as the votive relief was only one kind of offering, the funerary relief was only one of the kinds of monuments used to mark an underground tomb, but just like the human statue or the painted stele, and unlike animal statues, undecorated stelai and columns, it could also commemorate the dead person whose effigy it was. The funerary relief appears in the sixth century, particularly for warriors; then, in Athens at least, at disappears again, probably under the impact of sumptuary laws forbidding ostentatious funerals. However, at the end of the fifth century and perhaps, as mentioned above, under pressure from artists left unemployed when work on the great public. buildings stopped, it reappears — usually on stelai hot sometimes on lekythoi, marble imitations of the funerary vases of that name — and from then on it becomes increasingly frequent until the cod of the period of Classical antiquity, being granted to more and more social classes; even children and slaves had their special monuments.

Obviously such a wealth of sculptures comprises considerable stylistic and iconographic diversity over time and place. Iconographically, however, the dominant and constant feature is that the dead person is shown as he or she was in life. The dead never appear in the corpse—like position of recumbent mediaeval effigies, and are seldom glorified as heroes. In any ease, in the largest group of the Classical period — the Athenian reliefs — and in the Hellenistic period, there is nothing to suggest that the characters shown as living people are already in the next world: On the contrary, the relief shows the situation ante mortem, in this world: the dead person sometimes appears alone, sometimes with one or several relations with whom he is shaking hands in farewell. Before the Imperial period it is unusual for the relief to contain any indication of the dead person’s profession unless he was a warrior (one such illustration is the stele of Dexileos), or of the circumstances of his death (here the first—century stele of the shipwrecked Kerdon on Delos is an exception). The relief was accompanied by an epitaph, which was usually a very short one.

It need hardly be said that funerary reliefs stood in cemeteries; the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens is almost the only example left to show us what they looked like.

ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTURE OF GREEK

2010-07-30T22:56:00.000-07:00

ARCH ITECTURAL SCULPTURE OK GREEK

A Greek temple could accommodate figurative sculpture, in the triangle of the pediment, as akroteria, and on the frieze, whether it was a Done frieze divided into metopes or an uninterrupted Ionic frieze. The way in which Archaism solved the problems entailed, by adapting the imagery to predetermined architectural frames, was discussed above. Fundamentally, Classicism was only exploiting the formulas gradually perfected during the sixth and very early fifth centuries. Architectural sculpture later than the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, where, as we saw, the hesitations of Archaism ended, thus requires us to consider other aspects of the subject.

First, let us consider the quantity and spatio-temporal distribution of architectural sculpture of the period. Apart from the monuments built outside Greece itself (and there are good reasons for treating them as a separate subject), most of this body of work is found in Athens. In the form of the monuments still standing on the Acropolis, most of the works made in the second half of the fifth century are found there. The Parthenon reigns supreme in the wealth of its decorative sculpture: two pediments, representing on the east pediment (the façade) the birth of Athena, and on the west pediment the dispute between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica; the frieze of metopes and triglyphs, canonically arranged above the colums of a Doric temple and with ornamentation on all four sides of the building, a gigantomachy on the east side, a centauromachy on the south side, an Amazonomachy on the west side and the sacking of Troy on the north side; and finally, the famous Ionic frieze showing the Panathenaic procession, setting out from the west side, namely, the back of the monument, and making its way along the long north and south sides in two symmetrical files which join to the east in front of the assembly of the gods. In the matter of innovation, too, the Parthenon deserves its special place and the high esteem in which it is held today: it went against traditional Done usage for the Panathenaic frieze to be placed at the top of the exterior wall of the cella, and while Archaism had established the thematic homogeneity of the Ionic frieze on all sides of a building, this particular frieze takes the formula to extremes, exploiting the absence of any break at the angles of the building (while the Done frieze, on the contrary, has a strong break at those angles consisting of two adjacent triglyphs) and developing the same subject all round the four sides of the temple. It is the same on the pediment, where the usual figures shown lying in the angles give way to the chariot of the sun apparently rising above the horizon on the left, while the chariot of the moon is going down at the other end.

Besides the great ensemble of the Parthenon, the Acropolis has two more Ionic friezes to offer: the frieze of the Erechtheion, technically unusual in consisting of white marble figures fixed to a band of bluish limestone, although it is far from clear what subject or subjects the figures represent; and the frieze of the small Temple of Athena Nike with an assembly of the gods on the façade, a fight between Greeks and Persians on the sides, and a battle scene between Athenians and Boeotians on the back. Furthermore, the bastion on which the Temple of Athena Nike stands had a parapet with reliefs showing winged Victories preparing to sacrifice to the goddess; the best known is the Victory removing her sandal.

Outside the Acropolis there are some ten other temples of importance for the study of Classical architectural sculpture. In Athens there is the Done temple traditionally called the Theseion, although it was actually consecrated to Hephaistos, and an Ionic temple which still stood on the banks of the river Ilissos in the mid-eighteenth century but is now totally destroyed, although parts of its frieze are preserved in museums in Vienna and Berlin. Also in Athens is the Monument of Lysikrates, dating only from the fourth century, a pseudo-penipteral tholos (rotunda) of the Corinthian order, built in 335/334 BC by one Lysikrates to hold the bronze tripod he had dedicated after a ehoregic victory. In Attica, there is the Doric Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion (third quarter of the fifth century). On Delos, we have two temples built by the Athenians. At Delphi there is the last Temple of Apollo, built after the earthquake of 373 BC, and a tholos of almost the same period. In the Peloponnese, we have the Temple of Apollo Epikourios (“the Helper”) at Bassae in Arcadia, built as a votive offering after a plague during the last third of the fifth century; the Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros, and the Temple of Athena at Tegea, both of them dating from the fourth century.

Apart from the Acropolis, not all this architectural sculpture is of equal interest in either thematic originality or quality of execution, or simply because of its state of conservation. In fact many sculptural ensembles have come down to us in a very poor condition, but it has been possible to restore some of them, at least in part; such is the case with the tympanal figures of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. In the second century Pausanias mentioned the statues on the pediments (Apollo, Artemis, Leto and the Muses on the east pediment, Dsonysos and the Thyiades on the west pediment), attributing them to two Athenian sculptors, but the excavators at Delphi initially assumed they had been dismantled at some later date. Over the last twenty years, further examination of innumerable fragments in the the local museum and the subsequent work of re-assembly has made it possible to restore a large part of the axial Dionysus on the west pediment and to locate the remains of many other figures. Still at Delphi, the tholos had two series of metopes; they had been razed to recover some fine square stone slabs, but after much ingenious assembly work the fragments found on the spot have been matched to the backgrounds from which they were taken.

One of the Doric friezes regarded as particularly important is that of the Theseion, with the metopes of the façade showing ten of the labours of Herakles, and the four first metupes on the long sides showing eight deeds of Theseus. Among the Ionic friezes, the frieze of the Theseson is again notable; it is placed at the top of the cella wall, although only on the short sides. Other good examples arc the frieze of the temple at Bassae, showing a centauromachy and an Amazonomachy, once set above the interior colonnade of the cella but now in the British Museum; and the thematically original frieze of the Monument of Lysikratcs. Its subject is taken from a poem which has come down to us, although its date is disputed: the Homeric hymn to Dinnysos, telling how the god was carried off by pirates whom he metamorphosed into dolphins as a punishment. The frieze shows Dionysos seated, caressing a panther (his favourite animal) and surrounded by satyrs who are serving him, while other satyrs, armed with clubs and thyrsi (wands wreathed in ivy), chastise the pirates who are already in mid—metamorphosis. Among the notable pediments are those of the Temple of Epidauros, showing several Amazons as well as other figures, and those of the Temple of Tegea, one of the few buildings to have its tympanal sculpture ascribed by hterary tradition to a famous master. According to Pausanias, Skopas carved the Calydonsan Hunt of the east pediment and, on the rear pediment, the Battle of Caicus, an episode from the story of Telephus, grandson of Aleos, the legendary king of Tegea. Quite a number of fragments have been recovered from the excavations — among them the famous head wearing a lion skin which most people agree must be a Herakles — and many attempts have been made, all equally hypothetical, to determine the relation in which they stood to each other. Finally, of the akroterial statues, the akroterion of the roof ridge of the Temple of the Athenians at Delphi, built around 420, shows Boreas, the deified North Wind, carrying off Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens; and from the Temple at Epidauros come a winged woman carrying a bird, and two women on horseback.

Judging by the evidence of both Pliny and numismatic images, the Artemision at Ephestis was unusual in having embellishments on the lower blocks of the columns of the façade. There were already such embellishments in the Archaic temple, said to be endowed by Croesus, and the new temple, rebuilt in the fourth century, maintained the tradition. Among the fragments discovered, the most complete and best known shows a winged youth walking ahead of a draped woman and turning slightly towards her. She is followed by Hermes, shown naked and with lowered caduceus (the god’s wand with two intertwining snakes). Then, partly damaged, come two draped women. Very different interpretations have been put forward, the most likely being that the scene shows a woman going down to the underworld. She may be Alcestis, the virtuous wife who offered to die in place of her husband Admetus. She is led by Hermes in his capacity as “psychopompos”, conductor of souls, and by Thanatos (Death), a winged figure like his brother Hypnos (Sleep).

While there is a great deal of figurative architectural sculpture from the Classical period, it is not evenly distributed: the Parthenon not only has scenes on its two pediments and all the metopcs, but also an Ionic frieze which does not conform to the Doric rule. A differently arranged Ionic frieze also appears on three other Dorsc temples: the Theseson, the temple of Cape Sounion, and the temple at Bassae. But the first has only eighteen decorated metopes, the metopes of the second are left blank, and so are the metopes of the exterior colonnade of the third, although that temple has ornamented metopes at the top of the short walls of the cella. Then there are buildings with the areas for architectural sculpture left blank: the Delphi tholos has two series of metopes, but the tholos of Epidauros, although extremely elegant, has no figurative decoration.

This complex situation can be partly ascribed to preservation; it may even happen, as at Delphi, that pediments believed lost reappear some eighty years after the first excavations. But it is also due, if not to differences of actual period (which are hardly apparent at all between the fifth and sixth centuries), at least to a variety of regional customs. One notices that at Olympsa, and then at Bassae and Tegea, there was a custom peculiar to the Peloponnese of placing ornamented metopes at the top of short celia walls while leaving the metopes of the exterior colonnade blank. Similarly, the carving of the lower parts of the columns in the Artemision of Ephesus is a local peculiarity. Financial reasons must also have been involved, causing reductions in the extent and thus the expense of sculptural ornamentation, but we must admit that there is often no obvious explanation for the presence of embellishments in one place and not another.

The subject matter is almost exclusively mythological and not very varied. Contemporary scenes are unusual. The most notable of them is the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, showing the participants in the festival of the Panathenaea going in procession all along the temple, like the real procession climbing uphill from the Kerameikos quarter, the area north-west of the Acropolis, to the statue of Athena Parthenos (although it has recently been claimed that past heroes of Athens are shown among them, visual imagery bringing together characters who never co-existed). Then there is the frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike, which seems to show scenes from the Persian Wars, namely, from very recent history. However, the rest of the subjects belong to what we call mythology, including legends of the gods, such as the gigaotomachy with gods and giants in combat, and stories from ancient history such as the “Ilsoupersis” (the sack of Troy), the Calydonian Hunt, and so on. Identification of the various legendary scenes and characters is not always obvious; for instance, opinions on the subject of the akroteria of the temple at Epsdauros have varied widely. Despite these uncertainties, however, a really original subject like that of Dionysos and the pirates on the Monument of Lysiskrates is rare, and we are bound to notice the considerable number of gigantomachies, centauromachies, Amazonomachies and sacks of Troy which populate the Done metopes of the Parthenon, the Ionic frieze of Bassae, and the pediments of Epidauros.

This surprising recurrence of subjects leads one to formulate the question of the relationship between sculptural ornamentation and the edifice upon which it appears in new terms. In discussing Archaism, we studied the way in which the imagery had to conform to architectural constraints, but there is another way for images to relate to a budding: they may also relate to its function or to the individual who commissioned the work. And while sculptural decoration must be strictly subordinated to the frames imposed by the frieze and the pediment, there seems to be more latitude with themes arising from the function and history of the building itself

Sometimes, of course, there can be no argument. The sculptural imagery may refer to the divinity presiding over the temple, although, contrary to expectations, this is not at all frequent. The Parthenon is in fact quite unusual in that its pediments show two incidents from the story of Athena, and its Ionic frieze is a marble record of the procession organized in her honour every four years. Much more often, there are references to local history or the background and pretensions of the patrons who commissioned the work. For instance, the Telephos story on the west pediment at Tegea is explained by the family tree of Telephns whose grandfather was king of Tegea. At Delos, the abduction of Oreithyia depicted on the roof-ridge of the Temple of the Athenians is an Athenian legend, and the same is also true of the Theseid in the anonymous fourth-century temple. Similarly, the Doric frieze of the Theseion depicts the labours of Herakles and the deeds of Theseus, as the Athenian Treasury at Delos had done some decades earlier; the repetition of both themes shows that the juxtaposition of these two series of exploits was not a matter of chance: the Athenians must have wanted to show that their own national hero was as good as the great hero of their Peloponnessan adversaries. However, this relationship between sculptural imagery and the patrons who commissioned it can be regarded as of frequent occurrence only if we accept the almost certain hypothesis which has long been proposed as an explanation of the choice of gigantomachies, centauromachies, Amazonomachies and depictions of the sacking of Troy. The common factor between those four subjects is that the gods or the Greeks (a flattering correlation) are shown conquering either brutes like the giants and centaurs or “barbarians” like the Amazons and Trojans, and consequently:, less than fifty years after the battle of Salamis, such scenes were like a legendary echo of the victories of the Persian Wars. This transference of the very recent to the very distant past explains the predominance of those four subjects, and also the rarity in Greece of what is called, in Roman art, historical relief the representation of contemporary figures and events. The Parthenon is a perfect illustration of these two kinds of iconographic relationship between architectural sculpture and the building upon which it stands. First, the temple consecrated to Athena bears two episodes from her story on the pediments, and shows the ritual of her worship in the Ionic frieze; second, it was built by the Athenians and its metopes are a fourfold commemoration of their victories over the barbarians, transferred to four episodes of the legendary past.

But not all cases are so clear. For instance, there is no obvious reason why the Calydonian Hunt was chosen for the main pediment of the temple at Tegea. Of course scholars have never been short of ingenious explanations for their belief that the sculptural ornamentation of a temple or other building is iconographically linked to it, but such explanations do not always carry conviction, particularly since people often make the customary choice without much thought about it. For in spite of the admiration for Greek art normally felt to be obligatory, from the fifth century onwards it was extremely repetitive. We have only to observe how constantly the type of the Greek temple is found throughout antiquity, or how all Greek architecture comes down to indefinite exploitation of the peripteros, or external colonnade, and the peristyle, or internal colonnade. After all, adaptation of the decoration to the building which accommodates it is no more obvious in other arts; there have been frequent attempts to detect such links in the choice of subjects for mosaics, but in this case too the recurrence of subjects to which artists and their clients were accustomed obviously prevailed over any supposed concern for relevance.

This kind of iconographical laziness, a penchant for returning to the same subjects, is no bar to variations in their treatment, and indeed this is what seems to have interested sculptors most. In the Parthenon, for instance, the centauromachy was to be extended over more than thirty metopes, their rectangular form allowing each metope to show only two characters, but a centaur may be abducting a woman, brandishing a rock, rearing up in various ways, while his adversary may be shown standing and fighting, or with a knee on the ground, or lying down vanquished. The combination of such attitudes produces as many different single combats as there are metopes to be ornamented. At Bassae, by contrast, the centanromachy is shown in an Ionic frieze, so that the fight is no longer separated into single combats. Instead, the continuity of the struggle had to be shown, and accordingly we see a centaur straddling his lifeless comrade as he bites a Lapith, whose leg touches the leg of another Lapith, who is running the other way and is himself attacked by a third centaur who has fallen to the ground, with the knee of a third Lapith on his hindquarters. This Lapith in turn is threatened by another centaur, and so it goes on for dozens of yards. The exercise was even more arduous when the sculptor had to provide a variation on a hackneyed subject without changing the architectural frame. A sculptor who had seen the Ionic Amazonomachy of Bassac might have felt it possible to adapt the theme for a pediment, as at Epidauros, but have been very reluctant to rework it for a second continuous frieze which, as is demonstrated later, was done in the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos. It is not surprising that modern scholars have often been anxious to define the means used by the sculptors of Halikarnassos to distinguish themselves from their predecessors, turning to a more “airy” composition leaving large gaps between the adversaries, making attitudes tenser, drapery less undulating in order to give an impression of “dryness”, and so on.

This accepted ascendancy of skill over the invention of new subjects is seen again in the story of the painter Zeuxis, who was indignant when the strange concept of his centaur family was praised, rather than his skill in executing the painting. But visual art was not alone in producing countless variations on the same theme, and in its reluctance to renew the repertory; literature was just the same. Nine new tragedies were performed every year in Classical Athens, that is, nine hundred in a century, all drawing on the same stock of legends. The old stories were told again and again; the skill lay in making something new out of an old theme. Though few tragedies have come down to us, we have three about the recognition of Orestes by his sister Elektra, and it has become a classic exercise to contrast the play of Euripides with those of Sophocles and in particular Aeschylus, whose weaknesses Euripides criticized. Novelty of plot was not what made a great poet tragic.

THEMES AND STYLES OF CLASSICAL STATUARY: REALISM AND IDEALISM OF GREEK ARTS

2010-07-14T18:25:00.000-07:00

THEMES AND STYLES OF CLASSICAL STATUARY: REALISM AND IDEALISM

The advantage of studies of separate artists is that they provide an idea of the variety of artistic personalities and careers in antiquity, and also provide a clear survey of the’ themes of Classical statuary. Even when we have no originals or reliable replicas, the works of the great masters are known to us by name from literary texts, something of great importance in establishing what the repertory was. Conversely, the statues which have been preserved are useful when it comes to assessing the skill of he artists, but present considerable difficulty when it comes to identifying their subjects. However, many of them do seem to fit perfectly into the thematic repertory of the lost statues, and therefore can usefully supplement it.

Probably Myron’s Heifer was so famous throughout antiquity because it was very unusual. In any case statues of animals, already very infrequent in the Archaic period, are in an even smaller minority in the Classical epoch. Almost all the statues show gods or men.

The literary tradition records a vast number of divine statues, principally intended for cult purposes, which is explained by the multitude of temples (often several dozen in a city, and the cities themselves were extremely numerous). No doubt an additional reason, as taste evolved, was a wish to replace old idols which did not always meet with the respect due to their age, judging by the story of Parmeniskos bursting into laughter before the Leto of Delos. To the divine statues may be added what modern scholars, making a slightly misleading distinction, call penonificafions. It is true that the Eirene of Kephnodotos, the Eros of Praxiteles and the Pathos of Skopai (meaning “Peace”, “Love”, and “Desire”), are only representations in human form, or visual anthropomorphizarions, of words where grammatical gender determines the sex of the figure. Eirene is a woman because eirene is a feminine noun, Eros a youth because Eros is masculine. However, it is also true that in a polytheistic system the pantheon is never complete, and the Greeks did not hesitate to welcome new divinities into it, including such “personifications’. We know, for instance, from textual evidence, of the existence of the worship of Eirene, made official in Athens in 374, and of Eros, who had his temple at Thespiae. So the distinction between divinities and personifications of concepts is not clear, and no doubt was not clear even in antiquity. In terms of statuary, however, the obvious significance of their names means that the personifications lend themselves to what might be called discourse through imagery. For instance, the statue by Kephisodotos shows a woman holding a little boy in her arms; Pausanias describes it as “Eirene carrying Ploutos”, which in Creek means that “Peace carries (or brings with it) wealth”, and if Ploutos (the noun is masculine) is still only a little boy, then obviously peace will ensure his growth. However, such “meanings” remain more or less enigmatic, to the point where it was said of the Kairos (Opportunity) of Lysippos that it was little better than a charade. This cannot be historically fortuitous. Himerius, writing at the end of the fourth century AD and no doubt aware of the mechanism explained above, says simply that Lysippos “had enrolled Kairos among the gods”, but it is notable that the Eirene, Eeos, Pothos and Kairos are all from the fourth century BC, aud so in painting were the Demos (People) of Parrhasios and the Dsabolos (Slander) of Apelles. We have only to read Lueian’s account of this last—named painting, full of secondary attributes and personifications, to realize that presenting complex concepts as images was much to the taste of the time.

Whereas divine statuary is at one with the organization of the Greek pantheon in giving plenty of room to goddesses, human statuary is almost always masculine, with a few exceptions like the Phrynes of Praxsteles. As in the works of Myron, Pulyclitus and Lysippos described, it comprises two categories. On the one hand, there are the many individual likenesses, most of them athletes who had been winners at the Olympic Games or other such competitions; these were consecrated in the relevant sanctuaries as votive offerings in thanks for victory. On the other, there is a small number of generic images demonstrating an activity or gesture, such as the Diskobolos of Myron, the Doryphoros and Diadoumenos of Polyclitus, and the Apoxyomenos of Lysippos.

While thematically relevant, the distinction between gods and men is of no stylistic importance, for the anthropomorphism of the Greek divinities makes no clear distinction between divine and human bodies. In this respect, the main point is that statues closely resemble the flesh and bone of the model.’ As mentioned in the discussion of Archaism, a patient might well fear the attentions of a surgeon who had learnt anatomy from the study of a seventh-century kouros, but he might have more faith in one who had taken the Doryphoros as his anatomical model. But this conformity of the sculptured to the living body is very largely generic; differences due to individuality, age or background appear seldom or at a very late date.

The one constant distinction drawn as between the sexes, a feature inherited from Archaism. Over a long period, in the tradition of the kore, female figures remain clothed in thick drapery concealing the body, which meant that sculptors did not concern themselves with anatomical differences of sex. However, sculptors did not wait for Praxsteles to present his nude Aphrodstes in the fourth century (to be followed by many others, such as Timotheos with his Leda and the Sw4n) before discovering, in sculptural terms, those features of the female body that distinguish it from the male. In the middle of the fifth century BC they devised a way of compromising between the requirements of the image and those of the person being represented, between the sculptural exhibition of the female form and the immodesty of showing a goddess or a virtuous woman unclothed (in vase painting, only courtesans are shown entirely nude). This is the effect known as “wet drapery”; the figure is no longer shown wearing several thick and ample garments, but a single layer of very thin fabric which clings to the skin, so that a body both clothed and naked shows through. Among the works employing this effect are the Nike of Paionias at Olympia, the “Venus of Fréjus” in the Louvre, thought to be from a fifth-century original, the Nereids of the Nereid Monument, and in rehefs, the Victories on the parapet of the Bastion of Athena Nike on the Acropolis. There is no doubt, then, that the sculptors of the Classical period were equally able to depict male and female bodies.

Distinctions of age, on the other hand, are exceptional. There are hardly any sculptures of old men except the seated figure in a pediment at Olympia, bald and with sagging flesh, and few children except those in the votive offerings at Brauron, a little boy, and above all the little girl “bears”, the arktoi, whom the young girl at Delphi greatly resembles. The existence of these few examples shows that sculptors of the period had the necessary skill to show age differences, but that such differences were not generally of interest to them. Almost all the men and women of Classical statuary resemble real men and women aged about twenty, but as they encounter no older or younger people within the imagery of sculpture they are essentially ageless: when so few statues show old people and children, it cannot really he said that this is statuary of the young.

Other physical differences are either absent or appear quite late. Vase painting from the sixth century onwards shows Egyptians clearly characterized by their negroid profiles, shaven heads and very obvious circumcision, but ethnic distinctions are absent from Classical statuary. As for individuality of features, there is no evidence that sculptors were capable of showing this before the second half of the fifth century, when the Pericles of Kresilas was produced. (Krcsilas competed with Polyclitus and Phidias to make the wounded Amazon of Ephesus and was thus their contemporary.) In the light of probable replicas this portrait of Pericles, even if not a good likeness — something we cannot judge for lack of personal acquaintance with the famous leader — at least did not show just anyone’s face. Others who depicted individuality were the sculptor Demetrios of Alopeke, whom Luesan calls “creator of human beings” and who, according to Quintifian, was “more in love with likeness than beauty”, and later on Lysippos with his portraits of Alexander. Finally, many statues arc shown in positions which can be held for a long time, such as the pose known by its Cerman name of Spielbein (“trailing leg”) assumed by the Doryphoros. Even if the Diskobolos, Diadoumenos and Apoxymenos appear to be depicted frozen in a momentary attitude, again there is scarcely any evidence (leaving aside lost works such as Myron’s spnnter Ladas, who seemed to be panting) that before the fourth century sculptors were able to show anything of the changes of expression brought by a fleeting emotion. There is still little transitory expression shown except pain, in what is known as the “pathetic” or “Skopas” look, because Skopas introduced a slightly rolling eye and opened lips: a fleetmg expression indeed, which contrasts with the impassive immobility of fifth-century faces.
Thus the intended realism — that is to say, maximum reduction of the gap between the image and what it depicts — which seemed discernible in Archaic sculpture despite the inadequate results, leads in the Classical era to a more satisfactory realism, even if it is usually without distinction of age, individuality of features, or expression of emotion.

The Canon of Polyclitus seems to be an obstacle to this account of the style of Classical statuary. It is true that the few ancient texts which mention it are far from being very illuminating. We know that Polyclitus wrote a treatise entitled Kanon (“rule”), and that he provided a visible illustration of its precepts in a statue also called the Canon, which is the Doryphorus, but sometimes we seem to be dealing with a model of the human body and sometimes with the “rules of art” or liniamenta artis, as Pliny puts it. He adds this surprising statement: “Only Polyclitus is thought to have made art itself in a work of art” (artem ipsam fecisse artis opere). All the same, whether we are speaking of a live or statuary body, there is no doubt — as in Miss World contests today — that the perfection proposed by Polyclitus is a matter of exact measurements: it is “precisely measured”, says Lucian, and Galen adds: “It offers a perfect proportion between all the parts.”

As the beauty of the Canon thus derives from an arithmetical structure and not the faithful reproduction of a real and beautiful body, this approach has been described as “idealism”, as opposed to the “realism” represented by Myron, whose Diskobolos, Ladas, and Athena with the Satyr group were like snapshots holding the truth of a brief moment. “Realism” was also represented by Demetrios of Alopeke, who “preferred likeness to beauty”, and by Lysippos, who might even be called a “naturalist”, since as we have seen, he thought it best to imitate nature and not art. In fact the distinction between Classical idealism and realism is less clear—cut than we might suppose from the strong opposition between the two terms which exists today (as for instance when someone whose head is in the clouds is called idealistic). For one thing, the sculptors described as realist actually incline towards idealism: they all give their statues a “Greek profile”, shown by the study of skulls to have been no more common among the people of antiquity than it is now (it is not found in Archaic statues), or genitals too small to be anatomically likely. Similarly, though he claimed to imitate nature, Lysippos still worked in the tradition of the Canon because he modified its proportions, thereby implicitly accepting its general principle. Above all, the opposition between the ideal and the real is only an apparent one in the Greece of this period. We can tell this from Plato, who was certainly some sixty years later than Polyclitus, but the time gap is no problem because, like any other philosopher, Plato was bound to draw upon both the thought of his own time and on earlier ideas. In his Republic, Plato speaks of the myth of the cavern where most people see only appearances, like the shadows cast by a superior world, the intelligible worid or worid of ideas. A little later in the same dialogue, the comparison between three .kinds of couches is even more explicit: the painter is imitating the couch made by the carpenter, but his painting and this is Plato’s reason for condemning it is an imitation at a third remove, since the carpenter himself is imitating the “idea” of the couch (in Greek, Plato says eidos) which is the work of God: “he does not make (the couch) which is, but something which, without being it, is like (the couch) which is”. In this view of the world, the idea is not a kind of phantasm opposed to reality: it is reality itself, but understood on a superior level, that of the intelligible world to which only philosophers have access, and nothing else exists. “The idea (of the couch) n what the couch is” it is the very essence of the couch.

Their respective dates make it impossible for Polychtus to have been a disciple of Plato’s philosophy and as Plato ranks sculptors among the lower classes in the city, no doubt he would have thought very little of the artist. But today, speaking of Polyclitus or of Classical statuary in general, we talk of idealism, we are well advised to take the term in a Platonic sense and to see it not as anti—realism, but as an endeavour to attain the highest form of the real. Seen as models from which the whole variety of what is perceptible indefinitely proceeds, Platonic ideas are necessarily alien to individuality and contingency. Therefore, if there was idealism in Classical statuary and an entire artistic trend was going in the direction of the “idea” of the body, it must inevitably have given pride of place to the generic and non-temporal. This may well be the explanation of a general rejection of the individual and the fleeting moment. In Archaic statuary, we surmised that realistic intentions were thwarted by mad—equate skills; here, conversely, it may reasonably be argued that idealistic intentions delayed the acquisition of the technical mastery required to render every aspect of what is real: distinctions of age, individuality, ethnic groups and brief moments. This is a mastery that Hellemstic sculpture clearly exhibits.