Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Art
The Ancient & the Classical
In art, as in so many other realms, the ancient Romans looked to the Greeks for examples
of best practice. The Greeks had settled many parts of Sicily and southern Italy as early as
the 8th century BC, naming it Magna Graecia and building great cities such as Syracuse
and Taranto. These cities were famous for their magnificent temples, many of which were
decorated with sculptures modelled on, or inspired by, masterpieces by Praxiteles, Lysippus
and Phidias.
Sculpture flourished in southern Italy into the Hellenistic period. It also gained popular-
ity in central Italy, where the primitive art of the Etruscans (the people of ancient central
Italy) was influenced and greatly refined by the contribution of Greek artisans, who arrived
through trade.
In Rome, sculpture, architecture and painting flourished under first the Republic and
then the Empire. But the art that was produced here during this period was different in
many ways from the Greek art that influenced it. Essentially secular, it focused less on har-
mony and form and more on accurate representation, mainly in the form of sculptural por-
traits. Innumerable versions of Pompey, Titus and Augustus all show a similar visage,
proving that the artists were seeking verisimilitude in their representations and not just
glorification.
And while the Greeks saw art as being solely about harmony, beauty and drama, Roman
emperors like Augustus were happy to utilise art as a political tool, using it to celebrate
status, power and image. This form of narrative art often took the form of relief decoration
recounting the story of great military victories - the Colonna di Traiano (Trajan's Column)
and the Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Peace) in Rome exemplify this tradition. Both are
magnificent, monumental examples of art as propaganda, exalting the emperor and Rome
in a form that no one could possibly ignore.
Wealthy Roman citizens also dabbled in the arts, building palatial villas and adorning
them with statues looted from the Greek world or copied from Hellenic originals. Today,
museums in Rome burst at the seams with such trophies, from the Capitoline Museums'
copy of Galata morente (Dying Gaul, c 240-200 BC) to the Vatican Museums' original
Greek Laocoön and His Sons (c 160-140 BC).
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