Steven L. Tuck - A History of Roman Art

www.wiley.com/go/romanart

The Roman Art companion website features resources created by the author to help you use this book in university courses, whether you’re an instructor or a student.

FOR INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS

Glossary

Timeline

FOR INSTRUCTORS

Additional images of works of art discussed in the book

Sample lessons, assignments, and related educational resources

Cultural Property Controversies

Dating Dilemmas in Roman Art History

Restoration Issues in Roman Art History

The Role of Elites in Public Art and Architecture

Italic versus Classical Styles and Forms I: Temples

Italic versus Classical Styles and Forms II: Portraiture

Female Portraiture and Embedded Values

Romans Judging Roman Art: Values and Class

Art, Context, and Social Status I: The Tomb of Vestorius Priscus

Art, Context, and Social Status II: The Roman House

Narrative Moment

Suggestions for Further Reading

This introduction is (as the Roman dictator Sulla called Roman government) a bit of “a two‐headed dog.” It is designed to introduce you, the reader, to both Roman art and the study of art history. In other words, to some of the overarching themes and forms of the art that follow as well as some of the ways that art historians operate and analyze that art. Let’s start with the controversies.

provenance

the place of origin or earliest known history of something. In art it can refer to the chain of ownership of a piece from origin to the present day.

As I write this, and no doubt as you read it as well, one of the major controversies in art history and archaeology is over matters of cultural property. Museum professionals, academics, legal authorities, law enforcement officers, and diplomatic corps around the world have debated the question of who owns the past. Works that made their way into museum collections from the art market, such as the example below, legally purchased in an auction in New York at Sotheby’s or Christie’s and now in a small museum, are gaining increased scrutiny from foreign governments and art historians.

Some governments have called for the return of all such objects arguing that their provenance, the chain of ownership from the ground to the present day, cannot be proven and they might be the result of looting and illegal export. Art historians are drawn into this debate as they wrestle with issues of whether museum acquisition or even publication of these objects encourages the looting of archaeological sites by creating or encouraging the market in this material. Add to that the problem of fake or forged objects and it becomes very complicated and potentially controversial to handle objects that have recently come to light through the art market. Some have advocated for cut off dates that would prohibit the study and publication of recently acquired works while others have gone so far as to argue that professionals should only publish works with unbroken strings of legal ownership. Virtually all professionals, no matter where they stand in the debate, agree that we must be aware of and acknowledge issues of poor provenance. We should be aware that the lack of precise provenance information does limit what we can say about particular works. The example above could be from any one of a number of contexts: a tomb, a house, or a dedicatory statue in a public space such as a forum. Each one of those spaces would carry its own meaning and change how the work was viewed in antiquity and, given its provenance on the art market, we will never know that. But we will never know that for the vast majority of ancient art, even works that have eyewitness accounts of their excavation. Factor in the lack of documentation even for indisputably legitimate works such as the Portland Vase (Figure 5.29) and Ficoroni Cista (Figure 3.18) with long chains of ownership and it is clear that we cannot limit ourselves only to a discussion of works whose exact placement from the ancient world is transmitted to us. There are, however, works that should be and currently are being questioned, challenging our assumptions about what we know with confidence.

1.1Julio‐Claudian man, portrait from Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park Ancient Sculpture Museum, Hamilton OH.

Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.

Most dates assigned to works of art from the Roman world are not absolute. That is, they are not linked to a firm calendar, but are relative, determined by comparing an art work to one or more other examples with more or less similar characteristics. This gives us a series of relative, and sometimes very insecure, dates all based on some key works of art. When the dates of those key works are questioned, it has the potential to throw the whole system off. A case study in that issue is one of the most iconic works of Roman art, the Capitoline Wolf statue. This bronze statue of the she‐wolf that saved Romulus and Remus, on display in Rome since 1471, has long been a staple work of art history texts. It has been republished and discussed for over two hundred years as an Etruscan masterpiece of the fifth century BCE.

Some authors have argued that it was in fact the same piece of sculpture mentioned by the Roman politician/author Cicero in the first century BCE. Since 2006, however, the scholarly world has reevaluated this based on a number of arguments including the type of casting process and the results of scientific tests such as thermoluminescence dating. These combined with reexamination of the style of work have led to new conclusions that the wolf is actually a medieval work, not an Etruscan one, perhaps dating to the thirteenth century CE. Thus, if they are correct, this work was misdated by as much as 1800 years and is eliminated as an ancient piece of sculpture, let alone a famous one. This sort of reevaluation is an important part of art historical study and it means that the field is constantly changing.

1.2Capitoline She‐wolf statue, 5th cent. BCE or 13th cent. CE, Musei Capitolini, Rome. H 29 ½ in (75 cm) L 44 ¾ in (114 cm).

Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.

A somewhat hidden problem in the study of Roman art is the role of reconstructions or restorations. Most works that survive are damaged in some way leading to restoration or reconstruction, particularly prior to museum display. What is not readily apparent is that the resulting work then represents a series of conclusions made by the restorers and not an ancient work of art per se. In effect, reconstructions mask the tremendous number of uncertainties and suppositions scholars are faced with. In previous centuries the goal of restoration was to make an object look new so that the actual ancient portion could not be distinguished from the more recent repairs.

An excellent example of this is the statue that has been displayed and published in many art history texts as a Roman man holding the busts of his ancestors. It is a great piece for teaching about ancestor busts, dynastic display, and Roman piety. The problem is that the statue is now understood as a pastiche of fragments of a number of ancient statues, some male, some female, and close examination suggests that it bears no resemblance to any original ancient work. As such, it really tells us nothing about the form, meaning, or display of ancient art. But it says much about the restoration of ancient art since the fifteenth century and how that has changed our view of the Roman world. With that in mind, we need to cover some cultural elements of the Roman world that we might assume are identical to the same elements in our world, but are not. Awareness of these cultural constructions and their effect on art is critical to our full understanding of the art as they are frequently embedded in the art. It will be impossible to cover all of the cultural differences between ourselves and the Romans. A few examples, however, should make the point that the Romans do not live in our world. Their world has its own culturally constructed values and artistic forms that reflect those.