When in Rome: A Brief Introduction to Roman Art.
“The problem of characterising Roman art arises from its relationship in the Hellenic world. According to the old theories, Greek art provided the model, Roman art followed suit.” Eve D’Ambra.[1]
As D’Ambra says, “traditionally historians of Roman art have had to defend their field against charges of inferiority to and derivation from the achievements of the Greeks, particularly the idealised figure style of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. that define classicism.”[2] The first image today is one of the handful of surviving copies of an original bronze bust of the Athenian Pericles made by Roman artists in stone. Whether the original Greek sculptor Kresilas would have approved of the Roman’s interpretation of work which was called by the eminent archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler “a barber’s dummy” is open to question.[3] The same could be asked of a Roman copy of the Greek Timanthes’s painting of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, (above) which is an example of how Greek painting has been transmitted. Generally, Roman art has suffered from being labelled as predominantly derivative, lacking in originality, and worse of all grandiose in its aims and execution; but as D’ Ambra points out Roman sculpture more than any cultural epoch has had to endure accusations of inferior re-imaginings of the Greeks despite the fact that Roman culture does have its own identity and merit. For example, in the field of architecture the Romans made significant innovations such as viaducts, bridges, roads which have stood for centuries, though it is believed that engineering feats like roads and sewers were originally achieved by the Etruscans. And while there is some truth in the claim that Roman art appropriated the ideas of previous civilisations, the situation is more complex than this. Where sculpture is concerned, attitudes have never really softened towards the Romans since the lost canon of classical sculpture is only known through copies or pastiches of Greek art, but as Hort Janson suggested, the large number of Roman copies of Greek sculpture might be the result of esteem rather than ruthless appropriation of Greek culture.[4]
[1] Eve D’Ambra, Art and Identity in the Roman World, (Everyman Art Library, 1998), 10.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Mortimer Wheeler, Roman Art and Architecture, (Thames & Hudson, 1964), 160.
[4] H. W. The History of Art, (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1986) 158.
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