Roman sculpture (image heavy)

[SigniferOne]

As a parallel to my Roman painting thread, I thought start a discussion on some lesser-known marble masterpieces:

Nymph with a shell:


Borghese Centaur (teased by Eros):


Antinous Mandragone:


Pan teaching Daphnis:


Sperlonga Colossus (Odysseus poking the Colossus' eye out):


Sperlonga Pasquino Group (Menelaus holding Patroclus):


The Farnese Bull:


Castor and Pollux:
...

[The Good]

Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoy military history, but it's refreshing to see a thread devoted to Rome's cultural side.

Those are some fine sculptures too. I've heard (not sure if fact) that most Roman statues were actually based on Greek originals, is that true? I'm sure the Romans made many original works though.

[Exarch]

heh them romans sure liked the male physique eh

[John I Tzimisces]

Sculptures done in heroic or ideal nudity is very much a greek thing. *Roman* sculptors often went to great lengths to portray physical flaws to the point of nearly absurd exaggeration (such as...caved in cheeks that would have been caused by molars having fallen out, wrinkled faces and necks...). Perhaps inspired by the "rugged", butch, crew-cut roman ideal? Meanwhile the wealthy stockpiled "decadent" greek works in their villas on the bay of naples...


Of course some roman sculptors adopted the greek style of youthful, beautiful, and heroic nudity, but even more interesting is the mixture of styles: IE a perfect muscular body, with a wrinkled face only a mother could love!

Markedly missing here is roman relief sculpture. Native Italic relief sculpture is really nothing short of "primitive" with very little sense of depth or perspective (people in the foreground are the same size as those in the background, and merely placed beneath them to show they were closer), but once greek styles were adopted, a unique roman touch known as "horror vacui" came into being. This is essentially...the fear of open space. What you have is very realistic and detailed figures filling virtually every inch of space on a relief. Unrealistic but splendid nevertheless.


Roman painting is in my opinion far more impressive than their innovations in the sculpture field (though I very much enjoy the hyper-realism of some of them...not something we've really seen before or since!). I THINK the romans are the first ones to have painted landscapes (the surviving examples I would imagine are frescoes, even more impressive when you think about both the detail such roman paintings exhibit and the difficulty involved in painting a fresco!)

[Xavier Dragnesi]

I quite admire Roman sculpture. I've visited the Getty Villa in California, and some of the sculptures displayed there are truly amazing.

[Ludicus]

A lesser known masterpiece, abduction of Polixene. Look at the detail, almost as if its in motion:

[The Good]

I quite admire Roman sculpture. I've visited the Getty Villa in California, and some of the sculptures displayed there are truly amazing.

I went to the Getty Villa too, last spring. The art there was all very impressive.

[SigniferOne]

Ludicus that's definitely a nice statue, but it seems that it's a 19th century statue instead:

"Rape of Polyxena", by Pio Fedi (click here).

===

Sculptures done in heroic or ideal nudity is very much a greek thing. *Roman* sculptors often went to great lengths to portray physical flaws to the point of nearly absurd exaggeration

Actually that is a frequently uttered misconception. It was authered by Winckelmann and the 19th century school of art, positing that all ideal statues were necessarily Greek in nature. No such belief was held by actual artists in European history: Bernini, Michelangelo, etc. Needless to say, it's never had a single shred of evidence, and here for example is a Roman youth who's a greater ideal of male beauty than any Greek "Apoxyomenos":



Here is Germanicus, an ideal-looking realistic Roman prince:

This is essentially...the fear of open space. What you have is very realistic and detailed figures filling virtually every inch of space on a relief. Unrealistic but splendid nevertheless.

I think you have a very lop-sided, late-centered, perspective in mind. Here is a model relief of Emperor Nerva:



Trajan's Column and Ara Pacis are much like this.

Roman painting is in my opinion far more impressive than their innovations in the sculpture field (though I very much enjoy the hyper-realism of some of them...not something we've really seen before or since!). I THINK the romans are the first ones to have painted landscapes (the surviving examples I would imagine are frescoes, even more impressive when you think about both the detail such roman paintings exhibit and the difficulty involved in painting a fresco!)

I've got a whole thread about Roman painting here. They had a lot of innovation indeed: Studius basically invented landscape painting, and Amulius, just like Renaissance painters, was so at the peak of his powers that he painted a Minerva that looked at you from whatever angle you were looking at her (hello Leonardo Da Vinci). He was also so famous that Nero had to lock him away in his Domus Aurea to get him to finish all the paintings inside there, as Michelangelo was with Pope Julius II.

[conon394]

SigniferOne

Shouldn't you give a nod the the Late Classical/Hellenistic Greeks, I think a couple of your examples are copies of Greek originals - the 3 graces was a Hellenistic Bronze was it not?

I don't mean to imply Romans did not have their own artistic traditions and styles but one popular one was certainly copying of Hellenistic work.

[SigniferOne]

Actually I was debating whether to include the 3 graces or not. I think it's fine if we count it as a Greek original instead. I'm actually surprised you would allow Romans any creativity; that's more than a lot of art historians do today.

[conon394]

I think that attitude stems at least partly from just chance. I mean a lot of art - painting for example is lost, and the popularity of marble copies of Greek bronzes allows one to get snooty and say the Romans liked inferior derivative work. You should do a thread on Roman blown glass and cameos - real breathaking art and very much Roman (something like the portland vase).

[neoptolemos]

Romans were great patrons of sculptors who were keen on copying classical or hellenistic era masterpieces.
The great sculptures of Sig's posts are in their majority copies of previous eras.
A "clear Roman" style in sculpture should be searched in the late empire's and early Byzantine years,where clearly the sculptures are different from the helenistic realistic or heroic representation of the man/god/emperor

[SigniferOne]

I took out the 3 graces, and renamed some of the statues to give the official names they're known by.

I think that attitude stems at least partly from just chance. I mean a lot of art - painting for example is lost, and the popularity of marble copies of Greek bronzes allows one to get snooty and say the Romans liked inferior derivative work. You should do a thread on Roman blown glass and cameos - real breathaking art and very much Roman (something like the portland vase).

Conon it only looks like "there were a lot of copies" when you collect hundreds of thousands of sculptures from all over the Empire, and even then you're rarely able to find more than 5-10 copies of something. There are hundreds of copies of David, but nobody would say most Renaissance art was copies either. The reason is that Renaissance copies are quietly hushed away and only the originals are shown. So I'm showing some Roman originals here (with 3 graces excluded).

As for glass and cameos, I agree with you there. Portland Vase is mindblowingly good, but more fitting for the painting thread, so I'll just show the Borghese Vase here:

[conon394]

SigniferOne

That a good point – I can recall coming across something similar in an article on a iron helmet from Asia Minor from the Archaic era. The author pointed out (via a footnote complaint) that bronze amour because it is preserved better gets preferentially excavated, preserved, cataloged and displayed and published. Thus the apparent picture of iron amour use by classical or Hellenistic Greeks gets skewed via the preferences of excavators and collection curators.

[Keravnos]

@ Signifer, amazing thread if I saw one. Personally, I think that Romans were so much influenced by Greeks in any aspect of whatever it is you call art, that their own creations, while different in some aspects, show incredible continuity to the late Hellenistic ones. Rome isn't the only culture influenced by Greek anthropocentric view in life. Present day religious hindu art is also a benefactor of greek culture, obviously tailored to its own needs. Obviously when Roma was victorious a lot was ripped off from Greece, as spoils of war and copied locally, sometimes by slave greek sculptors themselves, but that was just the first step to a local production.

Buddhist art is another outflow of Hellenic Anthropocentric tradition as Buddhism in Maurya times was distinctively Aniconic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art

Many of the stylistic elements in the representations of the Buddha point to Greek influence: the Greek himation (a light toga-like wavy robe covering both shoulders

Hindu art as well.

It may be recalled that all these dynasties began their careers in the Indian sub-continent from the regions in the northwest that had witnessed considerable penetration of Greek influence from at least the fourth century B.C. Barring sculptural representations of popular gods, goddesses, demi-gods, vegetative and fertility divinities such as yakshas and yakshis, the genesis of anthropomorphic representations of major Indian deities - both brahmanical and non-brahmanical - is invariably traceable to Greek and Roman influences located in that region.

Just that Roman influence started from 30 BCE on, when Ptolemaic Egypt was conquered and anything Roman could reach India via the Periplous journey. From 4th century on and up to then it was just Greek, from the Colonists of Megas Alexandros to the last vestiges of the IndoGreeks whose independent state was conquered by the IndoSaka around 10 CE.

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2011...6001308400.htm

SigniferOne

That a good point – I can recall coming across something similar in an article on a iron helmet from Asia Minor from the Archaic era. The author pointed out (via a footnote complaint) that bronze amour because it is preserved better gets preferentially excavated, preserved, cataloged and displayed and published. Thus the apparent picture of iron amour use by classical or Hellenistic Greeks gets skewed via the preferences of excavators and collection curators.

I think you are aware of the Iron Muscle armor found in Prodromi, Thesprotia, Epeiros, Greece and is currently located in the Archaeological Museum of Kerkyra pending completion of the Archaeological museum of Igoumenitsa, Thesprotia.

This one,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Iron muscle cuirass of Prodromi details,


and


and


and

[Praetorian Quintus]

very nice, I like the one with the abduction of Polixene the most.

[Desperado †]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Trojan's Collumn - the only piece of Roman sculpture that pops into my mind. I guess i remmember it because it depicts the Roman/Dacian war.

A mod will probablly ban me for this, but its a question I've been itching to tell for ages and have never had the balls to ask anyone.

Why do Classical statues allways have tiny thing's. Was it because at that time they reckoned people with tiny watchyoucallits where cleverer or something?

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Why do Classical statues allways have tiny thing's. Was it because at that time they reckoned people with tiny watchyoucallits where cleverer or something?

Because maybe to the romans/greeks, a man worths isn't measured by the size of his penis but by his actions ??

[SigniferOne]

its a question I've been itching to tell for ages and have never had the balls to ask anyone.

Why do Classical statues allways have tiny thing's.

That's a funny, slightly self-referential way of phrasing a question


On a serious note: let's keep the forum PG-13 like the moderators want, but basically it isn't as small as you think. The main reason you may see it as under-sized is because the rest of the man is just so completely muscled-up in comparison. When you check Classical images where it 'changes' (Conon's link), you can clearly see these guys had no problem at all. Also, even when in normal position the depictions vary from statue to statue. Take a look at the above Colossus: come to think of it, the woman can't take her eyes off him either...

[Ludicus]

...but it seems that it's a 19th century statue instead

I am sorry.

Emperor Trebonianus Gallus, 251–53 A.D.

"The overall intent of this oversized bronze statue seems to have been to intimidate by virtue of its sheer physical presence, and clearly reflects the immense stylistic evolution in Roman portraiture since the time of Augustus. The portrait head shows an incredible emotional intensity that contrasts sharply with the disproportionately large and muscular body. The massive nude body itself resembles that of an athlete or gladiator, such as those in the mosaic pavements of the Baths of Caracalla, rather than what was typical for a representation of an emperor. In fact, the boots Gallus wears are of a type often shown in representations of boxers, and would have been more appropriate for the palaestra, or exercise yard, than the imperial court.
Although his pose is one routinely adopted by Roman emperors—recalling Greek heroic and athletic nude statues—the disproportion, wrestling gear, brutish crew cut, and stubble beard no longer evoke the ideals of classical Greece as in the days of Augustus.

Reconstructed from several fragments, this statue is remarkable because it is the only large-scale bronze to survive from the third century A.D., as well as the fact that it is one of the relatively few lifesize imperial bronzes to come down from antiquity”