Capitoline Wolf
Rome has centuries of art history. From ancient Rome to Byzantium, to the Italian Renaissance and the Baroque, to Arte Povera and Superstudio in the twentieth century, Rome has long been a hub for artists, historians and philosophers. When people use the term "Roman art," however, they are usually referring to the art and architecture of the culture terming itself "Roman," which includes art from the early Republican, Imperial and Byzantine eras.
Influence of Ancient Greece
Greece and the Italian peninsula are relatively close by along the Mediterranean sea. The culture, art and religion of the ancient Greeks held considerable sway over Roman art, though the Romans turned Greek aesthetic ideals to their own ends. The Early Roman Temple of Portunus, for example, from about 75 BCE, has the columns, pediments and scroll-shaped capitals (called "volutes") of the Classical Greek Ionic architectural order.
However, the Romans made a number of important changes. The Temple of Portunus emphasizes the front, as the lateral columns are engaged (a term meaning that the columns are half attached to a wall), instead of the free columns encircling Greek temples. The Temple of Portunus also uses more steps upward, emphasizing the procession to the front of the temple rather than the journey around the building.
Roman Concrete
The Romans pioneered the use of concrete, which revolutionized architecture. Concrete was cheaper and lighter in weight then the pure marble used by the ancient Greeks. It allowed larger buildings of greater structural complexity, moving away from the simple post-and-lintel form of Greek temples towards intricate arcades like those in the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia in Palestrina. Like the Temple of Portunus, the Sanctuary emphasizes and controls the visitor's procession into and through the architectural space but adds a series of arches--a radical departure from Greek prototypes.
Republican Portraiture
Taking their cues from the ancient Greeks, sculptors of Republican Rome created highly naturalistic and finely detailed portrait busts and sculptures of the human figure. However, as always, the Romans turned Greek aesthetics to their own ends. The Greeks had little use for portraiture--their sculptures of humans are not of individual and living people but rather idealized versions of the perfect and beautiful human.
Roman portraiture is naturalistic--it shows what the model or person depicted actually looked like. Many portrait busts show the wrinkles and defects of the person, manifesting the sculptors' interest in the personality and individual characteristics of their sitters.
Constantine and Byzantium
When Constantine the Great ascended to the Roman throne in the 4th century CE, the art of Rome changed radically from an interest in naturalism towards more abstract and stylized depictions. An example of this is the famous Arch of Constantine, which celebrates Constantine's victory over Maxentius in 312 CE. On the arch, Constantine combined work from his own time depicting his military exploits with sculptural reliefs from the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. Connecting himself to great and well-loved emperors like Trajan, Constantine also created an arch containing wildly different sculptural styles. The reliefs made by Constantine's sculptors are much less naturalistic, showing crowds of people with etched lines for the drapery instead of the soft folds of the earlier reliefs.
Early Christian Art
Constantine's other famous achievement is that he changed the imperial religion from worship of the emperor and pagan gods to the worship of Christ and the Christian God. In the three centuries after Christ and before Constantine's conversion, Christians practiced in secret underground catacombs--if caught, and if refusing to worship the Roman emperor, Christians were killed in brutal ways. Early Christian art was often simple and showed Jesus Christ as a poor shepherd.
Byzantine Mosaics
Romans made mosaics for centuries before the Byzantine era but mosaic decoration took on new-found importance and significance with the spread of Christianity. Once Christianity became the state religion, it was necessary for artists to depict Christ in an imperial manner befitting what Byzantine Romans saw as his godlike status. Mosaic decoration became an important part of church decorations. The Byzantines developed glass tesserae (the small pieces that make up a mosaic), which allowed them to use gold-leaf tesserae as well. Byzantine mosaics thus sparkle and capture the light in often spellbinding ways.
