History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

In Roman architecture were found great intelligence in the solution of the constructive problems involved in the enclosing of large spaces, great independence in the development of technical perfection, and a masterly conformity to the purpose of the structure; but Roman sculpture, although of very extended application, had less independence and significance. The Romans, originally too practical to provide a place for the beautiful beside the useful, first gave decided admission to this art when the political growth of the world’s metropolis had reached the acme of its power; and even then they transferred the question of sculpture to foreign artists in their employ. In the earlier republican period, their practice of this art was scarcely worthy of mention; in the time of the kings, or, at least, until the year 170 of the city, sculpture seems not to have existed in Rome, or only to have been employed in the ornamentation of utensils like the Cista Prænestina (Fig. 294) with Phœnician-Etruscan anthemions and figures of animals riveted on. If these may be considered rather as a direct importation from Etruria and the neighboring Grecian and Phoenician colonies than as their own work, it may be said that the Romans of this period had no images of the gods.

The first work of statuary which appears to have been exhibited in Rome was by an Etruscan, Volcanius, or Volca, from Veii. This was the colossal Jupiter sitting upon a throne, ordered by Tarquinius Priscus for the Capitoline Temple. Formed of terra-cotta, the face colored red, and wearing upon the head a chaplet of oak-leaves—originally, perhaps, of bronze, but afterwards of gold—it appears, with the exception of the head, to have been but slightly modelled, as it was covered with an embroidered garment. A Hercules within, and the quadriga upon the gable of the same temple, both also of terra-cotta, are ascribed to this artist. The chariot was, in 296 B.C., replaced by a bronze, which ninety years later was gilded.

Even from the beginning the tone of Roman sculpture was affected by Grecian as well as by Etruscan influences. The image in the Temple of Diana built by Servius Tullius upon the Aventine was a xoanon—a rude puppet of wood imitated from the Artemis of Massalia (Marseilles)—a work after the manner of the Ephesian Artemis, and consequently still undeveloped, and, at the best, Daidalian. Two generations later a more advanced Hellenic style obtained, when, in 493 B.C., two Greeks of Lower Italy, Gorgasos and Damophilos, decorated the Temple of Ceres with paintings and figures of terra-cotta. Eight years later, these were followed by the three divinities of the temple—Ceres, Liber, and Libera—which were the first bronze statues in Rome. But, at the same time with the work of the Grecian artists, and as if to prevent a decided Hellenic preponderance, the wooden image of Juno Regina was brought from Veii to Rome; and this cannot have been without effect upon the figures of Fortuna Muliebris, consecrated four or five years later, in 487 or 486 B.C. In the epoch next following, rife with civil wars and misfortunes of every kind, the pursuit of art seems to have languished, and its necessities to have been met chiefly by booty from the conquered cities of Etruria, though many of the subjects were Roman, like the Janus Geminus, copies of which have been preserved upon coins. (Fig. 295.) Of this period are the Vertumnus and the Lavinian Penates, and especially the first portrait statues of heroes like those of the Ephesian Hermodorus, the interpreter among the lawgivers of the Decemvirate, in 450 B.C.; of Ahala and L. Minucius, as protectors from usurpation, in 439 B.C.; and of the four ambassadors murdered by the Fidenates, in 438 B.C.

Art first became more active when, at the close of the Samnite war, in 288 B.C., the Roman authority began to make itself felt in the Grecian towns of Lower Italy. Then originated the rich sculptured ornaments of the Forum—the statues in honor of Mænius, Camillus, Tremulus, and Duilius, and also of the Greeks Pythagoras and Alkibiades, commanded by the oracle; further, as shown by Detlefsen to be probable, portraits of the Sibyls, and of Attus Navius, Horatius Cocles, M. Scævola, and Porsena, falsely attributed to earlier times. The Capitol was decorated by statues of the seven kings, and of Tatius and Brutus; and the Via Sacra, besides those of Romulus and Tatius, with an equestrian statue of Clœlia. Nothing remains of these works, which were almost exclusively of bronze, and only one sacred figure gives any illustration of their technicalities and style—the Wolf—now preserved in the Capitol. Although the two sucking children are lost, it is probably the one consecrated by Ogulnius under the Ruminal fig-tree, in 295 B.C. (Fig. 260.) Without doubt, the characteristics of this period were more Italian, or, according to the usual term, Etruscan, than Greek; and, in considering the sculptures generally, the predominant influence in the portrait-statues may be ascribed to the Etruscans, and, in those of a devotional character, to the Greeks, since it was from the Greeks that the Romans chiefly borrowed this type.