Art
The earliest Roman art dates back to the overthrow of the Etruscan kings and the establishment of the republic in 509 BC. For History, the end of Roman art and therefore the beginning of medieval art coincide with the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity and with the move of the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople, in the year 330. However, both the Roman style and the its pagan themes continued to be represented for centuries, often reproduced in Christian images.
Traditionally, Roman art is divided into two periods:the art of republican Rome and that of imperial Rome ( from 27 BC onwards), with subdivisions corresponding to the most important emperors or different dynasties. At the time of the republic, the term Roman was practically restricted to the art made in the city of Rome, which preserves the trace of its Etruscan past. Little by little, art freed itself from its Etruscan heritage, thanks to the expansion through Italy and the Mediterranean and the fact that the Romans had assimilated other cultures, such as the Greek.
During the last two centuries before the birth of Christ, a typically Roman way of constructing buildings, sculpting and painting emerged. However, due to the extraordinary geographical extent of the Empire of Rome and its diverse colonies, Roman art and architecture were always eclectic and characterized by employing distinct styles attributed to regional tastes and the preferences of their patrons.
Roman art is not only the art of emperors, senators, and patricians, but also that of all the inhabitants of the vast Roman empire, including the middle class of businessmen, freemen or plebeians, and the slaves and legionaries of Italy and their families. provinces. Interestingly, despite the existence of a large number of sculptural, pictorial, architectural and decorative examples, we know few names of its artists and architects. Generally, Roman monuments were made more to honor their patrons than to express the artistic sensibility of their creators.
Architecture
We can get a clear idea of Roman architecture through the impressive remains of ancient Rome's public and private buildings and thanks to writings of the time, such as De Architectura, a ten-volume treatise compiled by Vitruvius at the end of the 1st century BC.
The Roman temples were the result of a combination of Greek and Etruscan elements:rectangular floor plan, gable roof, deep vestibule with free columns and a staircase on the facade giving access to the podium or the base. The Romans kept the traditional Greek orders (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian), but invented two others:the Tuscan, a kind of Doric order without striations on the shaft, and the composite, with a capital created from a mixture of Ionic and Corinthian elements. . Maison Carrée, in the French city of Nimes (c. 16 AD), is an excellent example of Templar Roman typology.
In the Iberian peninsula, there are still some archaeological remains of temples from Roman times. In Spain, they can be found in the cities of Barcelona, Mérida (dedicated to the goddess Diana), Córdoba (columns on Claudio Marcelo street) and Seville. In Portugal, the temples of Egitânia (probably dedicated to Jupiter or Venus), of Évora (or Diana) and of Almofala (in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo) stand out.
Vesuvius erupted in 79 BC. and hurled hot ash, stones, and coal dust over the city of Pompeii. It was covered by a layer of ash 4 m thick and remained buried for over 1,500 years. Archaeologists began excavating in Pompeii in the 18th century. Among the remains found, there is the Forum, which appears here, and several temples, courts and palaces that constituted the administrative center of the city
Roman theaters and amphitheaters first appeared at the end of the republican period. Unlike Greek theaters, situated on natural slopes, Roman theaters were built on a structure of pillars and vaults and, in this way, could be installed in the heart of cities. The theaters of Italica and Mérida were performed in the times of Augustus and Agrippa, respectively. The oldest known amphitheater is that of Pompeii (75 BC) and the largest is the Colosseum in Rome (70-80 AD). In Roman Hispania, the amphitheaters of Mérida, Tarragona and Italica stand out. Circuses or hippodromes were also built in the most important cities; Piazza Navona in Rome takes the place of a circus built during the reign of Domitian (81-96 AD).
Both large and small cities had thermal baths or public baths (thermae). The baths (75 BC) near the Forum of Pompeii are an excellent example of the oldest models. During the Empire, these comparatively modest structures were progressively transformed, becoming more grandiose. Later examples, such as the baths of Caracalla (c. 217 AD) in Rome, even had libraries, tents and huge public spaces covered with vaults and decorated with statues, mosaics, paintings and stucco.
Among the various public construction projects of the Romans, the network of bridges and sidewalks, which facilitated communication throughout the empire, and the aqueducts, which brought water to cities from nearby springs (such as Pont du Gard, year 19 AD, near Nimes), are the most extraordinary.
In Portugal, good examples are the Olisipo aqueduct (of which the Águas Livres aqueduct, by D. João V, seems to follow a good part of the route), the Conímbriga and the water capture systems linked to an industrial architecture present in Tróia de Setúbal. In Spain, the most outstanding are the Alcântara bridge, in Cáceres, and the famous Segovia aqueduct.
Sculpture
Throughout Rome, statues and sculptural reliefs adorned public and private buildings. Indeed, some Roman buildings were little more than monumental supports for sculpture. The triumphal arches, erected in all parts of the Empire, stand out as among the most important monuments. Although almost none of the large sculptural groups installed in these arches have withstood the passage of time, these constructions were originally intended to support honorific statues.
Among the most important arches in Rome are those of Titus (c. 81 AD), in the Roman Forum, and that of Constantine (315 AD). In Spain, the arches of Bará, in Tarragona, that of Caparra, in the ancient city of Capeta (Cáceres), and that of Medinaceli, in Soria, whose construction dates back to the end of the 1st century AD, have been preserved. Historic columns were also erected, with spiral bas-relief friezes, reporting in great detail the military campaigns of the Romans. The first and largest of these was the Forum of Trajan (AD 113) built in Rome by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. Historical reliefs also adorn great altars such as the Ara Pacis of Augustus (closed in Rome from 13 to 9 BC). Few statues in bronze and almost none in gold or silver remain, as many of them were cast in the Middle Ages and later periods. One of the few that exists is the bronze equestrian statue (c. 175 AD) of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the square of the Capitol in Rome.
The Roman sculptural portrait, in which the statue of Constantine (c. 315 AD-330 AD) stands out, makes up one of the great chapters in the history of ancient art. The symbolic concept of the images continued into the period of imperial Rome, as the images of Augustus reveal.
Painting
Few paintings from this period remain, but from ancient literature, it is known that Roman artists worked on a wide variety of subjects, including historical events, myths, scenes from everyday life, portraits and still life.
Mural painting is well documented, especially in Pompeii and the other cities buried in the year 79 AD. by lava from the Vesuvius volcano. There are four stages called Pompeian styles. The first style (120 to 80 BC) is based on Greek interior decoration and is sometimes called the inlay style, as its paintings on plaster were used to imitate the appearance of polished marble walls.
The aim of the second style (80 to 15 BC) was to create, through perspective, a spatial illusion that extended beyond the surface of the mural. The third style (15 BC to AD 63) is a delicate painting in which the illusionism of the second style has been suppressed in favor of linear arabesques on monochromatic backgrounds. In the fourth style (AD 63 to 79), architectural motifs became popular again; but this time the logical perspective was relegated to a secondary plane, being replaced by fantastic structures, impossible to build.
Considered the greatest poet of ancient Rome, Virgil, who lived between 70 and 19 BC. composed the Aeneid, an epic poem of a mythological character, during the last 11 years of his life. Shaped like the Iliad and the Odyssey by the Greek poet Homer, it was the first masterpiece of the epic style. Numerous later writers took her as a model, both in themes and techniques, and paid homage to her in their texts and drawings. This 1469 painting depicts the author writing the poem Georgics (36-29 BC) in front of a statue of the Greek goddess Artemis.
Mosaics
In all parts of the Empire, Roman mosaics can be found. They range from abstract models of white and black tesserae to ambitious polychromatic figurative compositions, such as the large floor of Faun's house in Pompeii. Recent excavations have uncovered the beautiful stucco vaults in the Casa Farnesina (20 BC) and in the tomb of the Pancratii in Rome (160 AD). In Spain and Portugal, there are still several mosaics from the Roman period. Among the Spaniards, it is worth mentioning those of Mérida, of the Seven Sages and of the house of Mitreo and of Ampurias in Gerona, which portray The sacrifice of Iphigenia. Among the Portuguese, the best examples are those of the Augustanas baths, those of the Cantaber house and those found elsewhere in Conímbriga, some on display at the local Monographic Museum.
Roman Civilization
Take the opportunity to check out our video lessons related to the subject: