Roman Art ( from Greece )

Roman art grows out of Etruscan art, and at first it is a lot like Etruscan art. Because of this, it has a close relationship to Greek art as well. Roman art as a type of its own really gets going around 500 BC with the beginning of the Roman Republic. Roman people were particularly interested in portraiture: in making statues that really looked like one particular person, especially a famous person. Greek people were more interested in ideals: what is the most beautiful man? what is the most athletic man? But the Romans were more interested in reality.

A lot of people living in Rome seem to have believed, also, that having a good image of somebody's face was important to keeping their ghost happy after they died so they wouldn't haunt you. So throughout the time of the Roman Republic and all the way through the Roman Empire we see a lot of portraits.

About 200 BC, the Romans began conquering Greece, and this changed their art styles a lot. As the Roman soldiers marched through Greece, they saw a lot of Greek art in the temples, and in the cemeteries, and in public squares and people's houses. The Romans thought of the Greeks as being cooler than they were, so whatever the Greeks were doing in art, the Romans wanted some. They brought home a lot of the Greek art they saw (either by buying it or by stealing it, or maybe sometimes the Greeks gave it to them for presents), and they also brought back Greek sculptors (often as slaves) to make more art for them in Rome. Augustus' Ara Pacis, for example (the Altar of Peace), shows a lot of influence from Greek art in the fancy swirls on the front, in the frieze which is so much like the Parthenon frieze, and in the meanders underneath the frieze.

About 200 BC, the Romans began conquering Greece, and this changed their art styles a lot. As the Roman soldiers marched through Greece, they saw a lot of Greek art in the temples, and in the cemeteries, and in public squares and people's houses. The Romans thought of the Greeks as being cooler than they were, so whatever the Greeks were doing in art, the Romans wanted some. They brought home a lot of the Greek art they saw (either by buying it or by stealing it, or maybe sometimes the Greeks gave it to them for presents), and they also brought back Greek sculptors (often as slaves) to make more art for them in Rome. Augustus' Ara Pacis, for example (the Altar of Peace), shows a lot of influence from Greek art in the fancy swirls on the front, in the frieze which is so much like the Parthenon frieze, and in the meanders underneath the frieze.

There was also a lot of wall painting to decorate the walls of houses during this time. The wall painting of the first century AD is sometimes divided into four different styles, mainly because of the many different styles of wall painting that were found at Pompeii. In the first style, the fresco painting on the walls of houses is meant to look like marble panels (but it's a lot cheaper than marble panels!).

In the Second Style, the artists begin to add little things to the imitation marble panels in their paintings. This one has a garland. Other paintings have fruit, or flowers, or birds perched here and there.

Third Style Roman wall painting takes this idea further by adding whole scenes to the walls. Here in this painting from the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii you can see full-size people talking to each other and sitting on chairs, as if there were another room there instead of a wall.

Of course there are also local variations all over the Roman Empire. An empire which covered most of Europe and all around the Mediterranean could hardly have only one art style all over it. The Gauls continued their art styles from before the Romans came, and found ways to mix their old art styles with new Roman ideas. So did the Britons, and the Spanish, and the Carthaginians, and the Phoenicians, and so forth.With the third century AD (around 200 AD) several new ideas come into Roman art.

First, the wars with the Germans in the north were accompanied by a new taste for bloodshed in art, so that monuments produced in the 200's AD, like the column of Marcus Aurelius, often show people having their heads cut off or their guts ripped out, or suffering in some other way. You can also see this on the Arch of Septimius Severus.

Second, there was an increasing use of the drill rather than the chisel to make sculpting easier and faster, giving a somewhat different look.

Third, there was at the same time a new concern for the soul, maybe because there were more and more Christians in the Roman Empire. In art, this shows up as a lot of emphasis on the eyes (the windows to the soul), often with the eyes looking upward to heaven, or toward the gods. At the same time, because the body is less important, the sculptors take less care to show the body accurately. Sometimes the arms and legs are too short, and the head tends to be too big.

In the fourth century (the 300's) AD, there is less blood and gore, but the interest in the soul and the tendency to show that by big eyes and abstract, unreal bodies continues right up to the fall of Rome. This piece (from the Louvre) shows the goddess Venus rising out of the ocean.