Titus Flavius Vespasian was well known for restoring peace and stability to an empire in disarray following the death of Nero in A.D. 68. In the process he established the Flavian dynasty as the legitimate successor to the imperial throne.…
Sheldon Nodelman in his article “How to Read a Roman Portrait” explores the new ‘language’ of Roman portrait. He highlights the unusual realism of the new Roman portrait genre. Also, he further proposes that the highly individualistic characteristics of the portraits reflects the men’s real life.…
A sense of royal dignity, composure, and stability are created by the facial expression, the fixed pose, and the rectangular throne and high base from which the proportioned and frontal figure emerges. Cracks in the face, neck, and torso indicate ancient damage sustained by the sculpture.…
The Roman Empire used to be a powerful empire, but that soon came to an end. Many problems in the empire weakened it. The three main causes of the fall of Rome were military weakness, foreign invasions, and weak leadership. If these problems never occured, Rome could’ve been the most powerful and successful empire in history.…
The death of Alexander the Great inspired the beginning of the Hellenistic era of the fourth century. The characteristics of this period marked a separation and divide from earlier Greek’s works. Hellenistic artist’s begun expressing their sculptures with such high degree of naturalism contrasting with the earlier religious sculptures that used the idea of realism. Another essential idea that Hellenistic artists used to convey their message on sculptures was the use of emotion, drama, lighting and dynamics poses. The foundation of the Hellenistic era supported many of the works created during the Italian Renaissance. Many of the sculptures created during the Italian Renaissance comprised of religious beings such as Mary or JesuThis paper will…
The first work of art I found was earliest art which was from 120,000 BCE-100 CE. IT had the most depicting animals including large and powerful creatures that suggested the artists desire to imitate the actual appearance of the animals represented. Giving the animals a sense of volume by using gradation of color. It also created sculptural objects small and carved figures of people mostly of women and animals. It reflected a more abstract and less naturalistic approach to representation.…
Have ever wondered why the Roman Empire fell? This fall has been an ongoing process for more than a century. The falling of the Roman Empire was caused by poor military, deadly illnesses, and disaster and destruction.…
SHELDON NODELMAN from E. D’Ambra, ed., Roman Art in Context. NY: Prentice Hall. 1993 pp. 10‐20 Like all works of art. the portrait is a system of signs; it is often an ideogram of “public’ meanings condensed into the image of a human face. Roman portrait sculpture from the Republic through the late Empire-the second century BCE. to the sixth CE -constitutes what is surely the most remarkable body of portrait art ever created. Its shifting montage of abstractions from human appearance and character forms a language in which the history of a whole society can be read. Beginning in the first century B.C., Roman artists invented a new kind of portraiture, as unlike that of the great tradition of Greek Hellenistic art (whence the Romans had ultimately derived the idea of portraiture itself and a highly developed vocabulary of formal devices for its realization) as it was unlike that of their own previous Italo-Hellenistic local tradition. This new conception, conferring upon the portrait an unprecedented capacity to articulate and project the interior processes of human experience, made possible the achievement in the ensuing six centuries of what is surely the most extraordinary body of portrait art ever created, and forms the indispensable basis for the whole of the later European portrait tradition, from its rebirth in the 13th and 14th centuries to its virtual extinction in the 20th. No clear account of the nature of this reformulation of the structure of representation or of its historical significance has so far been given. That the portraiture which it engendered is strikingly “realistic” in the sense of evoking the presence of an astonishingly concrete and specific individuality, to a degree previously unknown and rarely equaled since, has been the universal experience of every observer. But this question-begging term (first used to characterize Roman portraiture, in opposition to the “idealism” imputed to the Greeks, three…
Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire conquered all territories west of the Persian Empire in modern day Iran and Iraq. The empire extended southwards into North Africa, and as far north as the British Isles. For close on to four centuries, the Romans controlled and conquered most of Western Eurasia and the Mediterranean. However, their rule came to an end because of the centrifugal forces of political and economic issues, foreign invaders and belligerent tribes, and socio-religious transformations. This brief response will help highlight the primary reasons why the Roman Empire fell.…
From C.A. 300 CE to 476 CE Rome began a steady decline to its collapse. Some historians disagree with this and have other theories. One of the other theories is that the Roman Empire did not collapse as the Eastern Empire did not collapse until “Fall of Rome at Constantinople in 1453.” The base of this theory is that the Eastern Empire became the Byzantium Empire, however it was no longer the Roman Empire as there were no longer any Roman Emperors. Another theory by Peter Wells is “The Roman Empire “fell” only in the minds of people who had a particular and limited view of what the Roman Empire was and who understood events such as Alaric’s capture of Rome in A.D. 410 as marking its end.” Wells argues that the change was extremely gradual and continued well past 476 CE. While Wells theory is more valid, the empire still did not exist after 476 CE.…
Pliny was a governor for Rome who served Emperor Trajan. When Christianity first appeared in his area he was not sure how it should be dealt with. So, he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan reporting what he had done so far and asking for further instructions because he was in doubt. Pliny starts his letter with a series of questions before going into what he has already done. Pliny has already questioned the ones believed to be Christians and ask them whether they were Christians or not. Then, those who still acknowledged being Christian was then questioned a second and third time, and was threaten with punishment. Pliny then states that “those who persisted in their ways, I had executed” and then states, “whatever the nature of their beliefs, I decided, they deserved punishment simply for being so stubborn and obstinate”. Then after that Pliny says that there were some Roman citizens among them, and he signed for them to be transferred to Rome, and be tried in the city of Rome.…
The Roman rulers from ancient times are well-known for their ability to coax their people into thinking a certain way through the use of convincing pieces of art. The Roman Empire was very troubled and its emperors are infamous for such things as lavish spending, unnecessary war, and even the killing of family members, and this begs the question: how were there so few large scale revolts of the Roman populous? The answer is the use of propaganda in popular Roman culture. The Roman Empire used propaganda for political purposes by incorporating Roman family values, victorious war scenes, and general Roman successes into their artworks.…
Figural reliefs decorated the inner and outer walls, depicting different mythological creatures or gods in tranquil settings, which contribute to the overall theme of peace in Augustus’ empire. The organized structure of the reliefs represent a controlled empire ruled by Augustus. In particular, the relief on the south frieze of the altar proves the specific propagandistic-type of art in the Augustan era. Standing 5’3’’ high, this relief depicts the imperial family and dignitaries, most likely inspired by the Panathenaic Festival Procession frieze from the Classical Period of Greece. However, the roman relief illustrates a specific event, “the inaugural ceremony of 13BCE when work on the altar began” (Klein, 200). The procession is made up of identifiable figures in the imperial family and members of the Senate along with children at their feet. In line with Augustan portraiture, the people’s faces are idealized and free of flaw, portraying these influential people as godlike. The children’s dispositions, however, deviates from the usual…
Throughout Egypt, during the middle empire art evolved as a symbol for power and permanence featuring straight lines and powerful figures; as time passed art evolved again morphing from simply representational images of man to the more idealized and anatomically correct style of Roman art. As art became more and more prevalent through the late 3rd and early 4th century’s artists began to focus more on anatomical perfection and realism borrowing artistic elements from other cultures such as the Greeks. Though the artistic styles of ancient Egypt and early Roman art vary widely, the underlying symbolism remains the same. This is clear in both the Egyptian Sculpture Vizier (Figure 1) and the Roman sculpture Bust of and Unknown Man (Figure 2). Where the ideas and concepts of both sculptures are essentially the same, their vastly different styles are evident of the time periods in which they were made.…
Pliny, instead of the usual Senatorial governor, was sent to Bithynia in 112AD to reorganise the affairs of the province, which had fallen into a deplorable state through the mismanagement of ‘local authorities’. Pliny was described by Mackail as being “upright and conscientious, but irresolute, pedantic and totally unable to think and act for himself in any unusual circumstances”.…