Here you'll find articles about ancient cultures and their artifacts.

Roman Portraits in Stone
by Bob Brooke

Statues and monuments of Roman citizens chronicled the history of the Empire. The ancient Romans combined military might with a commitment to public art, which served as both political propaganda and a means to commemorate military and diplomatic achievements.

The art of the ancient Greeks, as well as that of the Etruscans, influenced Roman sculpture. An Etruscan specialty was near life-size tomb effigies in terracotta, usually lying on top of a sarcophagus lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner at that time.

By the 2nd century BCE, most of the sculptors working at Rome were Greek, often enslaved in conquests such as the Battle of Corinth in 146 BCE. Sculptors continued to be mostly Greeks, often slaves. The Romans didn’t consider sculpting a profession, but more of a hobby. They imported great numbers of Greek statues to Rome, either as booty or the result of extortion or commerce, to decorate their temples.

Elite Romans clamored for reproductions of famed marble sculptures by skilled Greek artists like Praxiteles. Most Roman sculptors, though, never achieved such fame. They didn’t even sign their copies due to the low-class status of the artisans and the preference among Romans for works by Greek masters.

Many examples of even the most famous Greek sculptures, such as the Apollo Belvedere and Barberini Faun, are known only from Roman Imperial or Hellenistic copies.

Roman Portraiture
Portraits were the strong point of Roman sculpture. Unlike the Greeks and Egyptians who preferred to render ideal forms, Roman sculptors produced characterful works, often in narrative relief scenes.

The Romans left their own mark on sculpture by taking portraiture to an unprecedented level of verism and creating vast public works projects depicting complex mythologies and military victories. Starting with Augustus, the first emperor, Roman leaders started to use statues as propaganda; these works, usually made in marble or bronze, frequently idealized their bodies and emphasized, often fictional, connections to great military commanders of the past.

A good example was a life-size bronze statue of a man named Aule Metele, commonly known as The Orator, from the early 1st century BCE. The Orator raised his arm to a crowd, and although he was Etruscan, he wore a short toga and boots, a costume typical of a Roman magistrate:

The wrinkled, aged face of this unknown upper-class Roman citizen represented the ideals of the Roman Republic, which prized public service and their society’s military strength above all else. Instead of merely copying Greek marble statues by creating idealized images of their leaders as gods, citizens of the Roman Republic wanted to showcase their values in human form. To that end, rather than this bust depicting a young, athletic man, it emphasized his age—and therefore wisdom—through distinct wrinkles carved into his face and neck. The bust, dated to the 1st century BCE, also alluded to the politics of its time when patricians ruled the early Roman Republic. These aristocratic Romans later established a partnership with wealthy plebeians, but the Republic’s widening social inequality eventually led to its downfall.

After he ended a century of civil war, Augustus ascended to power to become the first Emperor of Rome. Augustus was an avid supporter of public art and used his commissions to legitimize his newly-created role. He ordered around 70 portrait statues of himself. Collectively, they suggest his noble lineage stretching back to Romulus, the founder of Rome.

Most Roman statues appeared far more lifelike and often brightly colored when originally created. The bare stone surfaces found today are due to the pigment being lost over the centuries.

However, portraits of elite Roman women tended to be far less realistic than their male counterparts, as they were commissioned to emphasize female beauty and the latest fashions rather than veristic portrayals. The curls piled on top of a woman’s head didn’t only make her the most fashionable, but also alluded to the Romans’ fascination with elaborate hairstyles. Wealthy Roman women hired stylists to curl their hair with irons or to sew in extensions. Those without the funds necessary for a personal stylist could go to a local barber or hairdresser. Sculptors were able to create the delicate tendrils thanks to new advancements in drills and artistic technique.

Prosperous middle-class Romans often placed portrait busts in their tombs. Many of them that survive represent ancestral figures, perhaps from the large family tombs like the Tomb of the Scipios or the later mausoleums along the roads outside of Rome. Historians believe the famous "Capitoline Brutus," a bronze head supposedly of Lucius Junius Brutus, is a rare example of the Italic style under the Republic, in the preferred medium of bronze.

Busts sent around the Empire to be placed in the basilicas of provincial cities were the Romans’ main visual form of imperial propaganda.

By the 3rd century CE, Roman art had largely been abandoned, or simply became too difficult to produce in the classical style. Even the most important imperial monuments appeared as stumpy, large-eyed figures in a harsh frontal style, in simple compositions emphasizing power at the expense of grace. The hallmark of this later style consisted of an emphatic hardness, heaviness and angularity.

This revolution in style shortly began before Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the state religion, which led to the replacement of large statues of Roman gods with monumental e statues of emperors. However, rich Christians continued to commission reliefs for sarcophagi, as in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, and very small sculpture, especially in ivory.

Roman Equestrian Statues
A bronze likeness of Marcus Aurelius astride his horse, likely erected around 176 CE, has served as a model for most equestrian statues throughout the history of European art. The artist depicted the duo in motion—the Emperor, who reigned from 161 to 180 CE, lifting his right arm while his horse raises its right foreleg, showcasing impressively detailed musculature.

Equestrian statues were common in ancient Rome; they honored military and civic achievements, but few survive fully intact. The Catholic Church destroyed many pagan statues in the Middle Ages, though it saved this particular piece because it was mistakenly believed to represent Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome.

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