A History of Sculpture

by Ernest Henry Short

With the advent of peace came the same desire to build which followed the Persian war in Athens. The Augustan age changed Rome—to use the well-worn metaphor—from a town of bricks to a city of marble. The student of sculpture will do well to associate both events—the coming of peace to the sorely tried Empire and the era of Augustan building—with a slab of the great Ara Pacis which has been preserved by a strange chance. The fragment shows Augustus, accompanied by his family and the leading citizens and senators, going to the consecration ceremony on July 4, 13 b.c.—the Independence Day of Roman Imperialism. The Ara Pacis was built to honour the Goddess of Peace, in the style of the Altar on the Acropolis of Pergamus. Just as the Altar at Pergamus memorized the delivery of the Hellenistic state from the Gauls, the Ara Pacis enshrined the fact that Rome was at last the acknowledged mistress of the civilized world. Men could now dream of an era of eternal peace; Rome set itself to enjoy the pleasures of intellectual existence in a way that had been impossible amid the perpetual march and remarch of armies and the rise and fall of factions.

It is true that the Roman Empire did not long remain at peace. But Italy, at any rate, did not experience the horrors of war for some centuries. The years of struggle had aroused a strong sense of national feeling. The imperial system organized by Augustus set men free to cultivate the arts of peace. Patrons with national instincts and artists with the gift of expressing national feelings and thoughts arose. In a few years, the tendencies shadowed forth in such sculptures as “The Julius Cæsar” and “[The Augustus],” became fixed, and a national school of Roman portraiture sprang up. The characteristics of the national style became more and more strongly marked.

THE HEIGHT OF ROMAN IMPERIALISM
(96 a.d. TO 117 a.d.)

The distinctively Roman portrait, untainted with any Hellenic or Hellenistic admixture, is seen in the famous statue of the Emperor Nerva in the Vatican collection. Here the artist has left the idealistic methods of the Hellenic sculptors entirely behind. He has depended upon the cunning use of realistic detail for his effect, emphasizing the impression of life-like portraiture beyond anything attempted in the Augustan age. Even the grace of a statue like “[The Augustus]” has been sacrificed in the search for vigorous actuality. The English equivalent of the new ideal is “Cromwell, warts and all.” But one cannot but admire the magnificent judgment with which the realistic detail is managed. There is nothing set down which does not add to the vivid sense of a living portrait. As Wickhoff says in his fine study of Roman art, “They gave an exact reproduction of nature, but with a terseness which produced the desired impression of cold distinction.” In the “[Nerva]” we have the Roman ideal in its most concrete form. Not a word too much, but sufficient to ensure the impression of intense and living reality.

Exactly the same tendency can be observed when the languages of the two races are compared. The Roman—practical man—preferred a narrow and concrete vocabulary. He willingly sacrificed flexibility of expression to a businesslike conciseness. Hence arose his system of inflectional speech, which is to be contrasted with the analytical speech of the Hellenes with its particles and definite article. Just as the inflectional language of Rome would not have expressed a quarter of what the agile-minded Greek desired to say, so the methods of the Roman portrait sculptor would have been valueless to the Greek to whom philosophical aperçus into the whole of human experience alone seemed worthy of incarnation in marble and bronze. The Roman sculptor, however, was quite satisfied with a narrow and concrete mode of expression. He was content with an intensely concise method entirely unsuited to the abstract thought and emotion in which the Greek had revelled.

Our argument then has led us to this. Roman sculpture, far from being a decadent anticlimax to Greek sculpture, is actuated by entirely new ideals—ideals which arise out of the Roman nature. It is, therefore, in the truest sense a national art. It embodies a temperament bearing no possible relation to that of the Greek. For that very reason the characteristics of Roman sculpture are most strongly accentuated at times when the ideals embodied are most potent. The Roman imperial spirit reached its climax in the age of Trajan (96 a.d. to 117 a.d.). The statue of Nerva dates from the early years of Trajan’s reign, that is a little before 96 a.d., when Nerva, who had raised his vigorous lieutenant to imperial rank, died. For close upon a century the tendency towards terse realism of the Roman method of portraiture had been growing. When we picture a characteristically Roman figure during the height of the imperialistic wave we can readily see why.

NERVA (DETAIL)

Vatican, Rome

What was the position at the time of Trajan himself? After securing his frontiers in Northern Europe, Trajan passed eastward. He crossed the Tigris and made a determined attempt to gain the control of the overland trade with India. At the time of his death, the Roman empire included Europe south of the Rhine and the Danube; in Asia it stretched to the Euphrates.