Steven L. Tuck - A History of Roman Art

1.3Statue of Roman man with busts of ancestors, “Barbarini Togatus,” 1st cent. CE and 16th cent. CE. Musei Capitolini Centrale Montemartini, Rome. H 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m).

Source: © 2014. Photo Scala, Florence. Courtesy of Soprintendenza di Roma Capitale.

In the modern western world most major public works are paid for by government at a variety of levels. Taxes are collected to pay for infrastructure from roads and bridges to water supply and drainage systems, and for all manner of public buildings from court houses to entertainment venues. Public officials administer these things and are paid salaries for their jobs. In the Roman world none of these steps were part of the culture. Taxes did not cover infrastructure projects; they were simply too low. Instead, elite Romans personally paid for all of the categories of projects listed above. In return their names were attached to the projects. This had been the case in Rome for a long time. The pattern was established at least as early as the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus (535–509 BCE). He commissioned the great Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. More importantly for the development of Roman urban space, he also began the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Drain, that drained water from all the low areas of the city between the hills. This allowed Romans to build in the areas that would become, for example, the Forum Romanum and later imperial fora.

1.4Cloaca Maxima (Great Drain) outlet to the Tiber, Rome, c . 510 BCE.

Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.

800–700 BCE Geometric Period

700–600 BCE Orientalizing Period

600–480 BCE Archaic Period

480–323 BCE Classical Period

323–31 BCE Hellenistic Period

This also set the precedent for later Romans at all levels that the expectation was for them to commission public art and architecture for the entire community. Rome’s great early highway, the Via Appia, was named for the man who paid for it, Appius Claudius Caecus. There was a critical side‐effect to this expectation for Roman art. Statues of those who used their wealth on behalf of the community were created and placed in the community, extending their reputation and image.

It might first be helpful to point out that the Romans also differed from other ancient people in their art and architectural forms. Contrasting Greek and Roman temples makes a good visual case for that difference. This Roman style temple is often referred to as Etrusco‐Italicbecause of its use in many cultures and communities in central Italy.

Etrusco‐Italic

refers to architecture, especially temples, shared by cultures of central Italy. The temples generally featured tall podiums, deep front porches, wide roofs, small cellas, and rooftop sculptures.

1.5a and 1.5bGreek Temple of Hera, Paestum, c . 450 BCE, compared with Roman Temple of Portunus, Rome, c . 150 BCE.

Photos courtesy Steven L. Tuck.

Greek temples were generally very large buildings; this example is 197 ft (60 m) in length. Roman temples, based on the traditions of the Etruscans, were generally much smaller, here 85 ft 4 in (26 m) in length. The Greek temple is raised on a three‐step platform while the Roman one has a tall 7 ½ ft (2.3 m) podium. This changes the relationship of the temple to the viewer as the Greek temple is accessible from all sides while the Roman one is strictly frontal and forces anyone approaching to do so from one direction. It essentially channels anyone viewing or engaging with the temple into a single point of view. By contrast, the Greek temple is peripteralwith a colonnade that extends to all four sides allowing approach from every direction and actually shielding the building within so that the front and rear are virtually indistinguishable. Probably as a result of their frontality Roman temples were more often found on hills projecting the religious and cultural identity of a community.

peripteral

refers to a building, usually a temple, with a single row of columns surrounding it.

Many art history texts which cover the Roman world use a terminology of plebeian, a term referring to the Roman lower class, art versus patrician, referring to the Roman upper class, art. The former is used to refer to art whose characteristics largely follow the style and conventions of the native Italic works while the latter, patrician, refers to Classical, Greek‐inspired, works. This concept and the associated terms plebeian and patrician are not used in this book. It applies a set of class distinctions to the art that is simply not accurate. When we note the Italic (the preferred term here rather than plebeian) style of a relief dedicated by a Roman emperor, to refer to it as plebeian is absurd. These are not classes of art or people, but choices of styles that in fact do not exist in an Italic versus Greek dichotomy, but as a range of options in which in many cases elements of the styles are blended to serve the needs of the artist and patron and to speak to the viewer in a new way. Some of the best examples of this deliberate use of Greek or Italic antecedents can be found in Roman portraiture, which demonstrate the meanings inherent in much of the art. Portraits as symbols of communication, especially under the principate (period of rule by a princeps , colloquially known as an emperor) represent a dialogue between the ruler and the ruled. This is particularly true when they are not set up by emperors but by others. In some cases this means that they reflect an acceptance of the cultural, political, and social premises of Roman artistic display.

Roman art can be seen, despite the style of a particular work, as a semantic system that conveys various meanings and values in a visual way. This makes sense in a society covering a vast geographical and cultural area with a very low literacy rate and no better means of mass communication than the visual. The arts helped to create and transmit a Roman cultural identity across the Roman world. The style may or may not be a component of this, but the work can also, through its elements of subject, form, and structure, convey a variety of meanings.

1.6Victorious general from Tivoli, Italy, c . 75–50 BCE. Museo Nazionale Romano Palazzo Massimo, Rome. H 6 ft 1 in (186.5 cm).