Art
With art it is much the same story; for the decoration of their villas and colonnades the Romans of the Empire continued to prefer their statues imported from Greece. Pausanias shows us that Greece, even in the second century A.D., was still teeming with works of art of every kind. Impoverished and shrunken as the old Greek cities were at this period, it shows some high-mindedness that they still retained treasures which would have fetched millions in the Trans-Adriatic markets. There was, however, a brisk trade in copies and imitations of the masterpieces. For statues, then, the Greek work of the fifth and fourth centuries almost destroyed any attempt at originality by the Romans. Only in portraiture was there much progress, and here work of great power and vigour was produced. It reaches the zenith perhaps under the Flavian emperors, but their successors of the Antonine period and later are often depicted on their busts with triumphant but unsparing realism. The bust of Philip the Arabian in the Vatican is one of the most striking. Sometimes it almost seems as if there was a malicious spirit of caricature in these too faithful portraits. Can Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher prince, have presented to the world a visage so weak and so tonsorially perfect?[71] Can Caracalla have borne his bloody mind so visibly written on his face?[72] In portraiture, there is certainly progress and not decay.
Otherwise, to judge by the remains, sculptors were almost confined to bas-relief. This was the medium chosen by emperor after emperor for the narration of his exploits, and advances were unquestionably made in the art of pictorial or narrative sculpture. That this is a high art in itself may, I think, be contested. One cannot escape from a sense of the practical futility of telling the history of the Dacian Wars on a serpentine band of ornament which soared away out of sight. It is rather characteristic of the plodding Roman, who so often lost sight of the wood in his faithful contemplation of the trees. If we look for the end to which this art of narrative relief was tending, we shall find it on the basis of the column of Antoninus Pius preserved in the Vatican garden.[73] These cavalrymen placidly gyrating round the group of standard-bearers, each on his own little shelf, are so extremely life-like as to recall nothing in the world so much as pieces of gingerbreads. We begin to perceive that Madame Tussaud would have been hailed as a great creative artist in Imperial Rome. Nevertheless, without subscribing to all the superlatives of Mrs. Strong, we may admit that Art was still alive and vigorous and still scoring fresh technical triumphs in the Antonine period and even later.
Plate LXXXVI. POMPEII: TWO VIEWS OF THE RUINS
Roman archæologists have recently worked out the history of Imperial Art with some precision. The reign of Tiberius continued the classical tendencies of Augustus. Under Claudius there was great constructional activity, mainly of a utilitarian character. The Claudian aqueduct, whose immense arches in brick still break the level horizon of the Campagna, is one of the greatest works of this period.[74] Nero’s was an age of Greek curio-hunting; much of Rome was rebuilt after the great fire in his reign and the Golden House must have been a stupendous sight. But on his death the Romans made haste to obliterate all traces of his work. The Flavian epoch was the culminating-point of Roman art. Vespasian destroyed Nero’s Golden House and restored the Capitol. He and his sons built the baths of Titus, the Arch of Titus[75] with the celebrated Jewish relief, and the mighty Flavian Amphitheatre, the Colosseum.[76] This was built in the style already noticed in the theatre of Marcellus, namely, with the three Greek orders of architecture, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, adorning the three stories of the façade; but here, as so often, the Greek façade is a mere shell to hide the solid Roman masonry of which the building is really constructed. It is noteworthy that the monuments of this age refute the historians who allege among Domitian’s other sins that he tried to destroy the works and the memory of Titus, his more popular brother. In the technical language of Wickhoff, this Flavian Age shows us “illusionism” at its height in art. Under Trajan, and in his famous column, the art of continuous narration in low relief is fully developed.[77] Hadrian, the cultured, travelling Philhellene, encouraged a reversion to the classical traditions of Greek art. The art of his period was profoundly influenced by the type of Antinous, a beautiful youth beloved by the emperor, whose romantic death by drowning in the Nile made a powerful impression upon the whole Roman world, because he was believed to have sacrificed his life for his emperor’s in obedience to an oracle. This type is preserved for us in many forms, but most notably in the colossal Mondragore bust in the Louvre[78] and the bas-relief in the Villa Albani.[79] His features were utilised to represent all the young male gods on Olympus. In their tragic beauty we see a mirror of Greece tinged by the Orient, as if Dionysus had wedded Isis and this were the offspring. The Antonine period, as exhibited on the panels in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, is gifted with immense technical fluency and, as Mrs. Strong remarks, a new spiritual seriousness. As compositions they are superb, but the weakness of expression in the face of Marcus Aurelius himself quite spoils their effect for some spectators.[80]
Architecture was still mainly designed in the three Greek modes variously combined, in spite of the fact that Rome had progressed far beyond Greek limits in constructional ability. Roman builders could manage a roof-span far in excess of the Greeks. The Roman arch gave a strength in concrete vaulting which expensive marble was unable to attain. Roman brickwork denuded of the marble incrustations which generally covered it of old is probably more impressive in its ruins than it was when it was draped with Hellenism, and, to me at least, remains like the aqueduct at Pont du Gard[81] and the Bridge of Alcantara[82] seem truer witnesses of the grandeur of Rome than all the marbles in all the museums. The celebrated Castle of St. Angelo, which still keeps watch and ward over the Tiber, is nothing but the core of Hadrian’s tomb—the Moles Hadriani—once clad in a vestment of Greek marbles and covered with Greek ornament.[83] The Pantheon, in spite of the inscription which ascribes it to Agrippa, is proved by the marks on its bricks to be a restoration of Hadrian’s time. It is indeed a superb example of vaulting and a miracle of construction. The plan is that of a dome so constructed that if the sphere were complete it would rest upon the earth. The magnificent interior has lost little of its ancient splendour.[84]
Plate LXXXVII. POMPEII: HOUSE OF THE VETTII
CUPID FRESCOES
For temple architecture, although the Romans had adopted the forms of Greek art they had wholly deserted the spirit of austere self-restraint upon which that art had rested. Thus they readily adopted the luxuriance of the East when it came to hand. In the splendid ruins of Heliopolis (Ba’albek) and Palmyra we see a riotous luxuriance of ornament which would have shocked the religious sense of Ictinus, but which fitly enshrined the ritual and mysteries of the Sungod. This craze for the colossal would have made the reverential Greeks tremble in fear of provoking the Nemesis of a jealous Heaven, but in its ruins it has left us superb and awful reminders of the riches and grandeur of its authors, and of the end of all riches and grandeur.
Moles Hadriani: restored
In domestic building the Romans had almost as little regard as the Greeks for the exterior elevation of their villas and palaces. The Roman gentleman still made it his favourite hobby to collect villas, and Pliny had almost as many as Cicero. But the main idea of the villa was comfort, and the main idea of Roman comfort was coolness, quiet, and beautiful scenery. Thus the wealthy man’s house consisted of a series of marble courts and cloisters spread over the ground regardless of space. Landscape and landscape-gardening were the most charming features. The Roman appreciated the scenery of Como or Sirmione, Tivoli or Naples quite as keenly as the tourist of to-day. He thought much of fresh air and good water. Nearly all Roman gentlemen were agreed in considering Rome itself, with its smells, its noise, and its perils by fire, as a pestilent place of abode, and they gladly fled to their country estates at Præneste or Baiæ. Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli[85] included reproductions of many famous buildings which he had seen and admired on his travels. The decoration of these villas encouraged two minor arts which figure prominently among their remains. The floors were commonly adorned with marble mosaic, of which we still have some charming examples.[86] The interior walls were incrusted either with marble, in the wealthier houses, or stuccoed and painted. Hence, it results that the Art of Painting is represented to us almost solely by mosaics, wall-frescoes,[87] and a few portraits on Egyptian mummy-cases. Nothing remains of the great masters of antiquity, Polygnotus, Zeuxis, and Apelles. But there may be faint echoes of their work on the frescoes of Pompeii executed by unnamed decorators. Even so there is great charm in much of this work. Professor Mau, the great authority on Pompeii, has distinguished four successive phases of painting in that city. At first the aim was to imitate the marble slabs used to cover the walls of the rich man’s house. Then growing bolder the painter imitates various forms of architectural treatment dividing up his wall space into panels and portraying cornices, columns, pilasters, and so forth. This is roughly the style of the first century B.C., and it is found in the so-called house of Livia on the Palatine Hill at Rome.[88] The third style, which Mau terms the “ornate,” was prevalent until about A.D. 50.
Plate LXXXVIII. FRESCO OF THE SACRIFICE OF IPHIGENIA
The architectural features now make no pretence at illusion. The columns have become mere bands of colour, and there is profuse ornament everywhere. The colours are somewhat cold. The fourth or “intricate” style once more emphasises the architectural character of the decoration, but the patterns are too intricate to present any appearance of reality. The whole wall space shows a riot of fantastic ornament often extremely graceful and effective. Flying goddesses and cupids impart a sense of airy lightness, and floral forms festoon themselves in charming curves. The pictures are smaller and the spaces wider. No more pleasing treatment of the interior walls of a house has ever been devised, at any rate for warm climates. The destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius in a.d. 79 brings the history of ancient painting to a premature close.[89] The subjects of the pictures are almost exclusively mythological.
The minor arts of the jeweller, the gem-engraver, the goldsmith reach a high state of technical perfection, but they do not improve in spirit or artistic feeling with the progress of the ages. Much of the furniture found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, especially the bronze-work,[90] exhibits most graceful forms, always Greek in inspiration.