Art History 7

Roman Art

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Red area shows Europa and Roman as compared to India, Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. Timeline by Jacob Voorthuis www.voorthuis.net

Map of Rom

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Map of the Roman Empire from http://teachinghearts.org

Characteristics of Roman Art

•Roman art expresses the aspirations of a powerful empire to glorify itself

•Roman architecture achieved monumental strength and durable innovation. Vaulted ceilings and arches allowed for huge buildings with vast open space

•Roman artists were interested in perspective and foreshortening

•Roman sculpture was greatly influenced by Greek sculpture

•The city of Pompeii, covered in volcanic ash in 79 AD, has given archeologists great knowledge about the daily life of Romans, and has preserved a history of Roman painting

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Panel painting Tondo showing the Severan family, C. 200 AD. Public domain image, unknown artist

Roman Architecture

•Generally, large Roman houses (domus) had a single entrance and few, if any, windows on the exterior.

•On entering the house one would walk into an atrium. A Roman atrium was a large open space enclosed by bedrooms and other rooms.

•A hole in the ceiling of the atrium was above a pool called an impluvium, which caught rainwater.

•Rooms such as dining rooms and studies were positions further from the atrium.

•Later, Roman atriums developed into gardens, some of which were held up by columns called a peristyle.

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Atrium showing impluvium and cubicula (bedrooms). Public domain image donated to wikipedia by Pearson, Scott Foresman

Roman Architecture•Architectural innovations by the Romans included vaulted ceilings, more developed arches, the use of concrete, and coffers (sunken panels carved into ceilings).

•A forum is a large public square surrounded by civic buildings.

•Columns were often a mix of Ionic and Corinthian or were Tuscan columns.

•Tuscan columns were unfluted severe Doric style columns.

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Roman forum. Creative

Commons Wikimedia image by

Stefan Bauer.

Roman Architecture•The colosseum to the left is the Flavium amphitheater, called the Temple of Peace.

•It was built to hold 80,000 people

•The Colosseum was used for gladiator games, animal hunts, executions, dramas and reenactments, as well as other public spectacles.

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Temple of Peace, ampitheater. . 1st Century AD. Creative Commons Wikimedia image by David Iliff. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

•Approximately a million animals and 500,000 people died in this amphitheater in Colosseum games.

•The exterior wall you see in the picture was originally the interior wall.

•80 ground level entrances made it easy to evacuate the ampitheater.

Roman Architecture•Although the Sistine Chapel was built much later, it is a good example of a modified, flattened “barrel vault” ceiling.

•Although barrel vaulting was known in earlier civilizations, it was not widely used until the Roman Empire.

•Barrel and groin vaults allowed buildings to be built with wide open spaces.

•Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel 1508-1512 AD

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Sistine chapel. GDF free use image by Snowdog

Groin vault. GNUFD image,

Wikimedia, McGinnly

Roman Painting

•One innovation of Roman painting is the development of landscape painting.

•Most of our knowledge of Roman Empire painting comes from Pompeii where volcanic ash buried the paintings and preserved them.

•Wall mural painting is most abundant.

•Most of the murals were painted secco (dry method), although some frescos (painting on wet plaster) also exist.

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Yorck project. Mural from Pompeii. Public domain image.

Roman Sculpture

•There are 5 major categories of Roman sculpture: portraits, historical and funeral reliefs, sarcophagi, and copies of Greek sculpture.

•Many of the early sculptures were polychrome terra cotta

•Sculptures were generally realistic or at least idealistic, some life size or larger.

•Many of the relief sculptures depicted military exploits. One of the great art treasures of the world is such a relief. It is the Column of Trajan, showing the Roman victory in the Dacian war.

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Antinous Mandragone, 130 AD. Jastrow, public domain image