Augustus of Primaporta

Roman Art

Augustus of Primaporta

C. 20 B. C. Marble, 6”8”. Vatican Museums, Rome.


Introduction: The Italians, another Indo-European people, began to occupy this peninsula when the Greeks started invading the Peloponnesus. They had complete possession of it by around 1000 B.C.


Among them, the best known and most important tribe were the latins, who settled near the mouth of the river Tiber. Later they founded Rome.

The Romans rose in power when the brilliant civilization of classical Greece began to decline, after the 5th century B.C.

Gradually expanded into a vast empire.

Augustus of Primaporta Sculpture: Roman architecture surpassed its

sculpture. In the beginning they had little

appreciation for the art of sculpture. Towards the end of the republic, after the

sack of Corinth in 146 B.C., and the defeat of Athens in 86 B.C., they brought back to Rome shiploads of Greek statues.


It became a fashion for the rich to own them; but there were not sufficient originals, many copies were made, and it is through these that many originals, now lost, are still known to us.

Many Greek sculptures migrated from their desolated country to serve their new overloads.


Even the Roman statues of this time reflect strong Greek influence. Gradually this gave place to more indigenous work.

The portrait was the greatest Roman contribution to sculpture.

Augustus of Primaporta Their sense of realism helped them to

excel in this art. In contrast to Greek idealism and

generalization, they aimed at reproducing physical features truthfully, even if they were ugly.

Their custom of keeping in their home wax masks of their ancestors aided them in developing this naturalistic tendency.


As we approach the rein of the Emperor Augustus (27 – B.C. – 14 A.D.) , we find a new trend in Roman portraiture that reaches its climax in the images of Augustus himself, as, for example, in the splendid statue from Primaporta.


At first glance, we may well be uncertain of whether it represents a god or a human being; this doubt is entirely appropriate, for the figure is meant to be both.


Here, on Roman soil, we meet a concept familiar to us from Egypt and the ancient Near East: that of the divine ruler. It had entered the Greek world in the 4th century; Alexander the Great had made it his own, and so did his successors, who modeled themselves after him.


The later, in turn, transmitted it to Julius Caesar and the Roman emperors, who at the first encouraged the worship of themselves only in the eastern provinces, where belief in divine ruler was a long – established tradition.


The idea of attributing superhuman stature to the Emperor, thus enhancing his authority soon became official policy, and while Augustus did not carry it as far as his successors, the Primaporta statue clearly shows him enveloped in an air of divinity.


Still, despite its heroic, idealized body, the statue has an unmistakably Roman flavor; he is pointing his right arm in the direction towards which he is looking, and holding a scepter in his left; the costume, including the rich allegorical program on the breastplate, has a concreteness of surface texture that conveys the actual touch of cloth, metal, and leather.


The head, too, is idealized, or, better perhaps, “Hellenized”; small physiognomic details are suppressed, and the focusing of attention on the eyes gives it something of the “inspired” look we find in portraits of Alexander the Great.


Nevertheless, the face is a definite likeness, elevated but clearly individual, as we can determine by comparison with the numerous other portraits of Augustus.

Every Roman would have recognized it immediately, for he knew it from coins and countless other representations

Augustus of Primaporta In fact, the Emperor’s image soon

came to acquire the symbolic significance of a national flag. As a consequence of such mass production, artistic quality was rarely very high, except when portraits were produced under the ruler’s patronage. That must have been true of the Primaporta statue, which was found in the villa of Augustus’ wife, Livia.

Augustus of Primaporta

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