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100-428: Roma's official cult served to advance the propagandist message of Imperial Rome. In Roman art and coinage, she is usually depicted in military form, with helmet and weapons. In Rome's eastern provinces, she was often shown with mural crown or cornucopia , or both. Her image is rarely found in a commonplace or domestic context. Roma was probably favoured by Rome's high-status Imperial representatives abroad, rather than

200-691: A frieze that is an unusually large example of the "plebeian" style. Imperial portraiture was initially Hellenized and highly idealized, as in the Blacas Cameo and other portraits of Augustus . The Romans did not generally attempt to compete with free-standing Greek works of heroic exploits from history or mythology, but from early on produced historical works in relief , culminating in the great Roman triumphal columns with continuous narrative reliefs winding around them, of which those commemorating Trajan (113 AD) and Marcus Aurelius (by 193) survive in Rome, where

300-523: A sestertius of Emperor Vespasian shows her reclining on Rome's seven hills with various accoutrements; in this interpretation, the readers of the Book of Revelation, familiar with the iconography of Roman coins, would understand who was being referred to. Rather than Roma's depiction as an elegant and regal woman bedecked in jewels and taming a wild animal in conquest in Roman art, the author of Revelation sees Roma as

400-529: A State divus in Rome and her Eastern colonies . Caesar's adopted heir Augustus ended Rome's civil war and became princeps ("leading man") of the Republic, and in 30/29 BC, the koina of Asia and Bithynia requested permission to honour him as a living divus . Republican values held monarchy in contempt, and despised Hellenic honours – Caesar had fatally courted both – but an outright refusal might offend loyal provincials and allies. A cautious formula

500-483: A bravura display of their talents, history's earliest descriptions of trompe-l'œil painting. In sculpture, Skopas , Praxiteles , Phidias , and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors. It appears that Roman artists had much Ancient Greek art to copy from, as trade in art was brisk throughout the empire, and much of the Greek artistic heritage found its way into Roman art through books and teaching. Ancient Greek treatises on

600-470: A corrupt and evil force "drunk with blood." While most scholars recognize that Babylon is a cipher for Rome, they also say that Babylon represents more than just the Roman city of the first century. Craig Koester writes that "the whore is Rome, yet more than Rome". It "is the Roman imperial world, which in turn represents the world alienated from God". The Altar of the Fatherland is the most famous part of

700-460: A crown of leaves raised above her head. A Roman denarius of 114/115 shows Roma with Romulus , Remus and the she-Wolf , the mythological beast who fostered them, and nourished them with her milk; the coin image implies that Roma has protected and nourished Rome since its very foundation. Her "Amazonian" appearance recalls the fierce, barbaric, bare-breasted Amazons who fought in the Trojan war alongside

800-501: A documentary movie. It survived destruction when it was adapted as a base for Christian sculpture. During the Christian era after 300 AD, the decoration of door panels and sarcophagi continued but full-sized sculpture died out and did not appear to be an important element in early churches. The Romans inherited a tradition of art in a wide range of the so-called "minor arts" or decorative art . Most of these flourished most impressively at

900-418: A feathered helmet; near him is a man in a short tunic, armed with a spear...Around these two are smaller soldiers in short tunics, armed with spears...In the lower zone a battle is taking place, where a warrior with oval buckler and a feathered helmet is shown larger than the others, whose weapons allow to assume that these are probably Samnites. This episode is difficult to pinpoint. One of Ranuccio's hypotheses

1000-518: A goddess, a whore, a near-saint, and as the symbol of civilization itself. She remains the oldest continuous political-religious symbol in Western civilization." Roman art Art of Central Asia Art of East Asia Art of South Asia Art of Southeast Asia Art of Europe Art of Africa Art of the Americas Art of Oceania The art of Ancient Rome , and

1100-496: A large and melancholy desert, ran down, not into a land cultivated, nor as drink for men, or for cattle, but through a land still on fire upon every side; for the Jews related that such a thing they had undergone during this war. Now the workmanship of these representations was so magnificent and lively in the construction of the things, that it exhibited what had been done to such as did not see it, as if they had been there really present. On

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1200-652: A tradition of figurative vase-painting comparable to that of the Ancient Greeks, which the Etruscans had emulated. Roman painting provides a wide variety of themes: animals, still life, scenes from everyday life, portraits, and some mythological subjects. During the Hellenistic period, it evoked the pleasures of the countryside and represented scenes of shepherds, herds, rustic temples, rural mountainous landscapes and country houses. Erotic scenes are also relatively common. In

1300-490: A unique development. In a later, even more turbulent era, a common coin type of Probus shows him in the radiate solar crown of the Dominate : the reverse offers Rome's Temple of Venus and dea Roma. While Probus' image shows his monarchic Imperium, Roma displays his claims to restoration of Roman tradition and Imperial unity. Lucan 's poem, Pharsalia , depicts Roma as a strong woman who represents Roman values. The poem follows

1400-604: A version adapted - probably not greatly adapted - for use in burial chambers, in what was probably a rather humbler social milieu than the largest houses in Pompeii. Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, or of the painting on wood done in Italy during that period. In sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history, and of provincial and decorative paintings. Most of this wall painting

1500-616: A very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. The best known and most important pocket is the wall paintings from Pompeii , Herculaneum and other sites nearby, which show how residents of a wealthy seaside resort decorated their walls in the century or so before the fatal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau , showing increasing elaboration. Wall paintings of

1600-436: A well-established and enthusiastic festival circuit, and temples to her were outnumbered by her civic statues and dedications. In 133 BC, Attalus III bequeathed the people and territories of Pergamon to Rome, as to a trusted ally and protector. The Pergamene bequest became the new Roman province of Asia , and Roma's cult spread rapidly within it. In contrast to her putative " Amazonian " Roman original, Greek coinage reduces

1700-435: A wider, and sometimes more utilitarian, purpose. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples. Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic; they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, and themselves with fine jewelry. In

1800-738: Is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek models but also encompassing Etruscan , native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art. Pliny , Ancient Rome's most important historian concerning the arts, recorded that nearly all the forms of art – sculpture, landscape, portrait painting, even genre painting – were advanced in Greek times, and in some cases, more advanced than in Rome. Though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of

1900-607: Is found on them in miniature. Luxury arts included fancy Roman glass in a great range of techniques, many smaller types of which were probably affordable to a good proportion of the Roman public. This was certainly not the case for the most extravagant types of glass, such as the cage cups or diatreta , of which the Lycurgus Cup in the British Museum is a near-unique figurative example in glass that changes colour when seen with light passing through it. The Augustan Portland Vase

2000-604: Is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Where Greeks worshipped the aesthetic qualities of great art, and wrote extensively on artistic theory, Roman art was more decorative and indicative of status and wealth, and apparently not the subject of scholars or philosophers. Partly because Roman cities were mostly far larger than the Greek city-states in population, and generally less provincial, art in Ancient Rome took on

2100-509: Is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality. The inscription on the medallion is written in the Alexandrian dialect of Greek and hence most likely depicts a family from Roman Egypt . The medallion has also been compared to other works of contemporaneous Roman-Egyptian artwork, such as the Fayum mummy portraits . It is thought that

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2200-531: Is represented as a major character on the silver Boscoreale cup . She stands helmeted, prepared for war, vigilant but at peace. Her foot rests on a "weapon pile"; trophies of past conflict. She converses with a young, standing male usually identified as the genius of the Roman people, who appears to be waiting to speak with the seated emperor (probably Augustus ). In the Gemma Augustea sculpture by Dioscurides, Roma sits beside Augustus in military apparel. On

2300-424: Is that it refers to a victory of the consul Fabius Maximus Rullianus during the second war against Samnites in 326 BC. The presentation of the figures with sizes proportional to their importance is typically Roman, and finds itself in plebeian reliefs. This painting is in the infancy of triumphal painting, and would have been accomplished by the beginning of the 3rd century BC to decorate the tomb. Early Roman art

2400-493: Is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Virtually every artistic technique and method used by Renaissance artists 1,900 years later had been demonstrated by Ancient Greek artists, with the notable exceptions of oil colors and mathematically accurate perspective. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous and considered tradesmen. There

2500-442: Is the masterpiece of Roman cameo glass , and imitated the style of the large engraved gems ( Blacas Cameo , Gemma Augustea , Great Cameo of France ) and other hardstone carvings that were also most popular around this time. Attalus III Attalus III ( Greek : Ἄτταλος Γ΄ ) Philometor Euergetes ( c.  170 BC  – 133 BC) was the last Attalid king of Pergamon , ruling from 138 BC to 133 BC. Attalus III

2600-424: Is used here in its original definition, which means "common". The Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos , noted for his wall murals, and Apollodoros , the originator of chiaroscuro . The development of realistic technique is credited to Zeuxis and Parrhasius , who according to ancient Greek legend, are said to have once competed in

2700-598: Is well attested by inscriptions and coinage throughout the Western provinces. Literary sources have little to say about her, but this may reflect her ubiquity rather than neglect: in the early Augustan era, as in Greece, she may have been honoured above her living Imperial consort. In provincial Africa , one temple to Roma and Augustus is known at Leptis Magna and another at Mactar . On the Italian peninsula, six have been proven – Latium built two, one of them privately funded. During

2800-601: The sacellum of the statue of Roma (which is exactly above the tomb of the Unknown Soldier) and two vertical marble reliefs that descend from the edges of the aedicula containing the statue of the goddess Rome and which run downwards laterally to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The statue of Roma present at the Vittoriano interrupted a custom in vogue until the 19th century, by which the representation of this subject

2900-598: The Altare della Patria in Rome and is the one with which it is often identified. On the top of the entrance stairway, it was designed by the Brescian sculptor Angelo Zanelli , who won a competition specially held in 1906. It is formed from the side of the Tomb of Italian Unknown Soldier that faces the outside of the building (the other side, which faces inside the Vittoriano, is in a crypt), from

3000-554: The Ara Pacis ("Altar of Peace", 13 BC) represents the official Greco-Roman style at its most classical and refined, and the Sperlonga sculptures it at its most baroque. Some late Roman public sculptures developed a massive, simplified style that sometimes anticipates Soviet socialist realism . Among other major examples are the earlier re-used reliefs on the Arch of Constantine and the base of

3100-459: The Arch of Titus (1st-century CE), the arch of Septimius Severus and the arch of Constantine , Roma accompanies the emperor in his chariot, as his escort. Figures of Roma are rare in a domestic context, throughout the Empire, and in the provinces they may have been associated with Roman residents. In Corinth , a statuette of Roma was found, along with those of other deities, in a domestic shrine in

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3200-480: The Catacombs of Rome by pressing them into the mortar. They predominantly date from the 4th and 5th centuries. Most are Christian, though there are many pagan and a few Jewish examples. It is likely that they were originally given as gifts on marriage, or festive occasions such as New Year. Their iconography has been much studied, although artistically they are relatively unsophisticated. Their subjects are similar to

3300-455: The Column of Antoninus Pius (161), Campana reliefs were cheaper pottery versions of marble reliefs and the taste for relief was from the imperial period expanded to the sarcophagus. All forms of luxury small sculpture continued to be patronized, and quality could be extremely high, as in the silver Warren Cup , glass Lycurgus Cup , and large cameos like the Gemma Augustea , Gonzaga Cameo and

3400-574: The Roman Republic , believing that if he did not then Rome would take the kingdom anyway and this way would avoid bloodshed. Tiberius Gracchus requested that the treasury of Pergamon be opened up to the Roman public, but the Senate refused this. Not everyone in Pergamon accepted Rome's rule. In 131 BC Aristonicus , who claimed to be Attalus' brother as well as the son of Eumenes II , an earlier king, led

3500-502: The Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus , and very small sculpture, especially in ivory, was continued by Christians, building on the style of the consular diptych . Traditional Roman sculpture is divided into five categories: portraiture, historical relief, funerary reliefs, sarcophagi, and copies of ancient Greek works. Contrary to the belief of early archaeologists, many of these sculptures were large polychrome terra-cotta images, such as

3600-511: The Whore of Babylon , generally considered a reference to Rome, the dominant power of the era, and potentially an outright caricature of Roma: The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: "Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations." And I saw that

3700-456: The first century AD . The Casa della Farnesina is another prominent survival of the early Empire that gave up many paintings. Outside of Italy, many fragments of painted walls have been found throughout the Empire, but few complete pieces. In the Western provinces of the Empire most fragments date from after the year 200 AD. From Roman Egypt there are a large number of what are known as Fayum mummy portraits , bust portraits on wood added to

3800-441: The " Great Cameo of France ". For a much wider section of the population, moulded relief decoration of pottery vessels and small figurines were produced in great quantity and often considerable quality. After moving through a late 2nd century "baroque" phase, in the 3rd century, Roman art largely abandoned, or simply became unable to produce, sculpture in the classical tradition, a change whose causes remain much discussed. Even

3900-441: The 3rd century BC, a specific genre known as Triumphal Paintings appeared, as indicated by Pliny (XXXV, 22). These were paintings which showed triumphal entries after military victories, represented episodes from the war, and conquered regions and cities. Summary maps were drawn to highlight key points of the campaign. Josephus describes the painting executed on the occasion of Vespasian and Titus 's sack of Jerusalem : There

4000-588: The Apollo of Veii (Villa Givlia, Rome), but the painted surface of many of them has worn away with time. While Greek sculptors traditionally illustrated military exploits through the use of mythological allegory, the Romans used a more documentary style. Roman reliefs of battle scenes, like those on the Column of Trajan , were created for the glorification of Roman might, but also provide first-hand representation of military costumes and military equipment. Trajan's column records

4100-458: The Christian era of the late Empire, from 350 to 500 CE, wall painting, mosaic ceiling and floor work , and funerary sculpture thrived, while full-sized sculpture in the round and panel painting died out, most likely for religious reasons. When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of

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4200-614: The Eastern festival in Roma's honour. The temple contained the seated, fully draped, Hellenised and highly influential image of dea Roma – the Palladium in her right hand symbolised Rome's eternity. In Rome, this was a novel realisation. Greek interpretations of Roma as a dignified deity had transformed her from a symbol of military dominance to one of Imperial protection and gravitas . IMP M IVL PHILIPPVS AVG ROMAE AETERNAE Following

4300-409: The Greek poet Melinno , who claims that she is the daughter of Ares and celebrates her fierce commitment to her offspring and proteges. Hail, Roma, daughter of Ares, golden-belted warlike queen, you whose earthly home is Olympus the eternally unshattered. Ancient Fate gave to you alone the unbroken glory of royal command, so that the strength to rule is in your hands. Under your strong-strapped yoke

4400-515: The Hellenic equivalent of Roman Minerva . Like Athena, Roma represents "manly" female virtues, a personification of an empire built on conquest. From here on, Roma increasingly took the attributes of an Imperial or divine consort to the Imperial divus , but some Greek coin types show her as a seated or enthroned authority, and the Imperial divus standing upright as if her supplicant or servant. In

4500-465: The Panayia Domus, tentatively dated to the 2nd or 3rd century AD. The deities were smaller than life but all were well-crafted and most had traces of gilding: the Roma figure sits on a backless chair, and wears a triple-crested war-helmet and a peplum. She has one breast exposed and wears shin-high openwork boots, based on a "draped Amazon", warlike type. Sterling speculates an official connection between

4600-428: The Roman populace at large. She was depicted on silver cups, arches, and sculptures, including the base of the column of Antoninus Pius . She survived into the Christian period as a personification of the Roman state. Her depiction seated with a shield and spear later influenced that of Britannia , personification of Britain. A helmeted figure on Roman coins of 280–276 and 265–242 BC is sometimes interpreted as Roma but

4700-421: The Rome as the capital of Italy, an essential concept, according to the common feeling, from the history of the peninsula and the islands of Italian culture . Ronald Mellor wrote in the introduction to his work on Roma, summing up her influence, that "As personification, as goddess or as symbol, the name Roma stretches from classical Greece to Mussolini 's Fascist propaganda  ... Roma has been seen as

4800-465: The Trojans, supposed ancestors of the Romans. In the late Republican and early Imperial era, Roman literature presents Roma as one of the Roman people's several "Great Mothers", who included Venus and Cybele . Ennius personified the "Roman fatherland" as Roma: for Cicero , she was the "Roman state", but neither of these are dea Roma. Though her Roman ancestry is possible – perhaps merely her name and

4900-774: The arts are known to have existed in Roman times, though are now lost. Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces. The high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. Many of the art forms and methods used by the Romans ;– such as high and low relief, free-standing sculpture, bronze casting, vase art, mosaic , cameo , coin art, fine jewelry and metalwork, funerary sculpture, perspective drawing, caricature , genre and portrait painting , landscape painting , architectural sculpture, and trompe-l'œil painting – all were developed or refined by Ancient Greek artists. One exception

5000-507: The arts." In Greece and Rome, wall painting was not considered as high art. The most prestigious form of art besides sculpture was panel painting , i.e. tempera or encaustic painting on wooden panels. Unfortunately, since wood is a perishable material, only a very few examples of such paintings have survived, namely the Severan Tondo from c.  200 AD , a very routine official portrait from some provincial government office, and

5100-456: The backdrop to civil or military narrative scenes. This theory is defended by Franz Wickhoff , is debatable. It is possible to see evidence of Greek knowledge of landscape portrayal in Plato's Critias (107b–108b): ... and if we look at the portraiture of divine and of human bodies as executed by painters, in respect of the ease or difficulty with which they succeed in imitating their subjects in

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5200-590: The best surviving indications of what high quality Roman portraiture could achieve in paint. The Gennadios medallion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Late Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local dialect features. He had perhaps been given or commissioned

5300-523: The catacomb paintings, but with a difference balance including more portraiture. As time went on there was an increase in the depiction of saints. The same technique began to be used for gold tesserae for mosaics in the mid-1st century in Rome, and by the 5th century these had become the standard background for religious mosaics. The earlier group are "among the most vivid portraits to survive from Early Christian times. They stare out at us with an extraordinary stern and melancholy intensity", and represent

5400-515: The chests of the earth and the gray sea are harnessed. You safely steer the cities of the people. And though mighty time strikes down all things and reshapes life into many different forms, for you alone the wind that blows to the uttermost ends of power does not shift. For indeed you bear the strongest great warriors of all, just like the bountiful crop yielded by Demeter's fields. At this time, her cult in Republican Rome and its Eastern coloniae

5500-556: The civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate, led by Pompey the Great . Caesar, having repudiated Roma and her values, ends up with a mistress in Egypt ( Cleopatra ), having set his own destiny on a path to eventual self-destruction. The poet identifies Roma (the res publica ) with the idealised Roman matrona. A man who rejects either one cannot be truly Roman. Roma

5600-479: The classical tradition". This revolution in style shortly preceded the period in which Christianity was adopted by the Roman state and the great majority of the people, leading to the end of large religious sculpture, with large statues now only used for emperors, as in the famous fragments of a colossal acrolithic statue of Constantine , and the 4th or 5th century Colossus of Barletta . However rich Christians continued to commission reliefs for sarcophagi, as in

5700-463: The coins of the consuls, and in the Imperial period coins as well as busts sent around the Empire to be placed in the basilicas of provincial cities were the main visual form of imperial propaganda; even Londinium had a near-colossal statue of Nero , though far smaller than the 30-metre-high Colossus of Nero in Rome, now lost. The Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker , a successful freedman (c. 50-20 BC) has

5800-514: The defeat of Clodius Albinus and his allies by Septimius Severus at Lugdunum, Roma was removed from the Lugdunum cult ara to the temple, where along with the Augusti she was co-opted into a new formulation of Imperial cult. Fishwick interprets the reformed rites at Lugdunum as those offered any paterfamilias by his slaves. It is not known how long this phase lasted, but it appears to have been

5900-509: The divine personification of the Roman state acknowledged the authority of its offices, Republic and city, but did not displace local, Greek cult to individual Roman benefactors. Democratic city-states such as Athens and Rhodes accepted Roma as analogous to their traditional cult personifications of the demos (ordinary people). In 189 BC, Delphi and Lycia instituted festivals in her honour. Roma as "divine sponsor" of athletics and pan-Hellenic culture seems to have dovetailed neatly into

6000-661: The entire Hellenistic world except for the Parthian far east, official and patrician sculpture became largely an extension of the Hellenistic style, from which specifically Roman elements are hard to disentangle, especially as so much Greek sculpture survives only in copies of the Roman period. By the 2nd century BC, "most of the sculptors working in Rome" were Greek, often enslaved in conquests such as that of Corinth (146 BC), and sculptors continued to be mostly Greeks, often slaves, whose names are very rarely recorded. Vast numbers of Greek statues were imported to Rome, whether as booty or

6100-471: The ferocity of her image, and depicts her in the "dignified and rather severe style" of a Greek goddess, often wearing a mural crown , or sometimes a Phrygian helmet . She is occasionally bareheaded. In this and later periods, she was often associated with Zeus (as guardian of oaths) and Fides (the personification of mutual trust). Her Eastern cult appealed for Rome's alliance and protection. A panegyric to her survives, in five Sapphic stanzas attributed to

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6200-521: The great families and otherwise displayed in the home, but many of the busts that survive must represent ancestral figures, perhaps from the large family tombs like the Tomb of the Scipios or the later mausolea outside the city. The famous bronze head supposedly of Lucius Junius Brutus is very variously dated, but taken as a very rare survival of Italic style under the Republic, in the preferred medium of bronze. Similarly stern and forceful heads are seen in

6300-504: The ideas it evoked, according to Mellor – she emerges as a Greek deity, whose essential iconography and character were already established in Italy, Magna Graecia and Rome. The earliest certain cult to dea Roma was established at Smyrna in 195 BC, probably to mark Rome's successful alliance against Antiochus III . Mellor has proposed her cult as a form of religio-political diplomacy which adjusted traditional Graeco-Eastern divine monarchic honours to Republican mores: divine honours to

6400-770: The identification is contestable. Other early Roman coinage shows a warlike " Amazon " type, possibly Roma but in Mellor's opinion, more likely a genius than dea (goddess). During the late Second Punic war and the Pyrrhic war , Rome issued coins with a Phrygian helmeted head; some are stamped Roma . In later coin issues, Roma wears varieties of the Attic helmet , the standard pattern for Roman army officers. In cases where clear coin legends are lacking, identification has been unresolved. Other female members of Rome's official pantheon were also helmeted, including Bellona , and Minerva ,

6500-431: The images clearly derive more from Greco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones. They are remarkably realistic, though variable in artistic quality, and may indicate that similar art which was widespread elsewhere but did not survive. A few portraits painted on glass and medals from the later empire have survived, as have coin portraits, some of which are considered very realistic as well. Gold glass , or gold sandwich glass,

6600-410: The late empire, after 200AD, early Christian themes mixed with pagan imagery survive on catacomb walls. The main innovation of Roman painting compared to Greek art was the development of landscapes, in particular incorporating techniques of perspective, though true mathematical perspective developed 1,500 years later. Surface textures, shading, and coloration are well applied but scale and spatial depth

6700-496: The late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople employed nearly 10,000 workmen and artisans, in a final burst of Roman art under Emperor Justinian (527–565 CE), who also ordered the creation of the famous mosaics of Basilica of San Vitale in the city of Ravenna . Of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only

6800-468: The latest taste, and provided a large group in society with stylish objects at what was evidently an affordable price. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda , and have survived in enormous numbers. While the traditional view of the ancient Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents (much of the Greek sculptures known today are in the form of Roman marble copies), more of recent analysis has indicated that Roman art

6900-484: The latter being equivalent to Greek Athena , who is believed by some scholars to be Roma's original. The earliest, more-or-less unequivocal coin identification of Roma is a silver stater of c. 275 BC issued by Rome's ethnically Greek allies at Locri , on the Italian peninsula. It shows an enthroned woman with shield and other war-gear, clearly labelled as Roma. Another woman, labelled as Pistis (Greek equivalent to Roman Fides , or "good faith"), stands before Roma with

7000-416: The lost " Golden Age ", he singled out Peiraikos , "whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few ... He painted barbershops and shoemakers' stalls, donkeys, vegetables, and such, and for that reason came to be called the 'painter of vulgar subjects'; yet these works are altogether delightful, and they were sold at higher prices than the greatest paintings of many other artists." The adjective "vulgar"

7100-579: The luxury level, but large numbers of terracotta figurines, both religious and secular, continued to be produced cheaply, as well as some larger Campana reliefs in terracotta. Roman art did not use vase-painting in the way of the ancient Greeks, but vessels in Ancient Roman pottery were often stylishly decorated in moulded relief. Producers of the millions of small oil lamps sold seem to have relied on attractive decoration to beat competitors and every subject of Roman art except landscape and portraiture

7200-463: The most important imperial monuments now showed stumpy, large-eyed figures in a harsh frontal style, in simple compositions emphasizing power at the expense of grace. The contrast is famously illustrated in the Arch of Constantine of 315 in Rome, which combines sections in the new style with roundels in the earlier full Greco-Roman style taken from elsewhere, and the Four Tetrarchs (c. 305) from

7300-488: The new capital of Constantinople , now in Venice . Ernst Kitzinger found in both monuments the same "stubby proportions, angular movements, an ordering of parts through symmetry and repetition and a rendering of features and drapery folds through incisions rather than modelling... The hallmark of the style wherever it appears consists of an emphatic hardness, heaviness and angularity – in short, an almost complete rejection of

7400-498: The oldest painting to be found in Rome, in a tomb on the Esquiline Hill : It describes a historical scene, on a clear background, painted in four superimposed sections. Several people are identified, such Marcus Fannius and Marcus Fabius. These are larger than the other figures ... In the second zone, to the left, is a city encircled with crenellated walls, in front of which is a large warrior equipped with an oval buckler and

7500-481: The opinion of onlookers, we shall notice in the first place that as regards the earth and mountains and rivers and woods and the whole of heaven, with the things that exist and move therein, we are content if a man is able to represent them with even a small degree of likeness ... Roman still life subjects are often placed in illusionist niches or shelves and depict a variety of everyday objects including fruit, live and dead animals, seafood, and shells. Examples of

7600-432: The outside of mummies by a Romanized middle class; despite their very distinct local character they are probably broadly representative of Roman style in painted portraits, which are otherwise entirely lost. Starting in the 3rd century AD and finishing by about 400 we have a large body of paintings from the Catacombs of Rome , by no means all Christian, showing the later continuation of the domestic decorative tradition in

7700-570: The owners of this Roma figure and the nearby Corinthian Temple 1. In the Book of Revelation , the letter to the church in Pergamum (2:12–17) warns against Christian involvement in eating food sacrificed to idols, potentially a reference to the Roman imperial cult which was popular in Pergamum in the era and worshipped the deified Augustus and the goddess Roma. Later, the book introduces a villainous character called

7800-529: The piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition. One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an Early Medieval crux gemmata in Brescia , in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and Gothic queen Galla Placida and her children; in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of Isis . This

7900-510: The reign of Tiberius, Ostia built a grand municipal temple to Roma and Augustus. In the city of Rome itself, the earliest known state cult to dea Roma was combined with cult to Venus at the Hadrianic Temple of Venus and Roma . This was the largest temple in the city, probably dedicated to inaugurate the reformed festival of Parilia , which was known thereafter as the Romaea after

8000-413: The result of extortion or commerce, and temples were often decorated with re-used Greek works. A native Italian style can be seen in the tomb monuments of prosperous middle-class Romans, which very often featured portrait busts, and portraiture is arguably the main strength of Roman sculpture. There are no survivals from the tradition of masks of ancestors that were worn in processions at the funerals of

8100-509: The same period have also been found from the remains of prominent aristocratic homes in Rome itself. Much of Nero 's palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea , built in the 60s AD, survived as grottos; their paintings inspired the grotesque style of painting popular during the Renaissance. We also have murals from houses identified with the emperor Augustus and his wife Livia , dating to beginning of

8200-440: The strongest fortifications taken, and the walls of most populous cities upon the tops of hills seized on, and an army pouring itself within the walls; as also every place full of slaughter, and supplications of the enemies, when they were no longer able to lift up their hands in way of opposition. Fire also sent upon temples was here represented, and houses overthrown, and falling upon their owners: rivers also, after they came out of

8300-406: The territories of its Republic and later Empire , includes architecture , painting , sculpture and mosaic work . Luxury objects in metal-work , gem engraving , ivory carvings , and glass are sometimes considered to be minor forms of Roman art , although they were not considered as such at the time. Sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting

8400-456: The theme of the glass jar filled with water were skillfully painted and later served as models for the same subject often painted during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out ... Indolence has destroyed

8500-413: The tiny detail of pieces such as these can only have been achieved using lenses . The later glasses from the catacombs have a level of portraiture that is rudimentary, with features, hairstyles and clothes all following stereotypical styles. Roman genre scenes generally depict Romans at leisure and include gambling, music and sexual encounters. Some scenes depict gods and goddesses at leisure. From

8600-461: The top of every one of these pageants was placed the commander of the city that was taken, and the manner wherein he was taken. These paintings have disappeared, but they likely influenced the composition of the historical reliefs carved on military sarcophagi , the Arch of Titus , and Trajan's Column . This evidence underscores the significance of landscape painting, which sometimes tended towards being perspective plans. Ranuccio also describes

8700-461: The various Dacian wars conducted by Trajan in what is modern day Romania . It is the foremost example of Roman historical relief and one of the great artistic treasures of the ancient world. This unprecedented achievement, over 650 foot of spiraling length, presents not just realistically rendered individuals (over 2,500 of them), but landscapes, animals, ships, and other elements in a continuous visual history – in effect an ancient precursor of

8800-432: The well-known Fayum mummy portraits , all from Roman Egypt, and almost certainly not of the highest contemporary quality. The portraits were attached to burial mummies at the face, from which almost all have now been detached. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The background is always monochrome, sometimes with decorative elements. In terms of artistic tradition,

8900-455: The western part of the Empire, the foundation of the Imperial cult centre at Lugdunum introduced Roman models for provincial and municipal assemblies and government, a Romanised lifestyle, and an opportunity for local elites to enjoy the advantages of Roman citizenship through election to Imperial cult priesthood. Its ara (altar) was dedicated to Roma and Augustus. Thereafter, Roma's presence

9000-471: The woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus. (...) The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth. Additionally, the Whore of Babylon is described as riding a beast with seven heads, and the book says that "the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated," typically understood as the seven hills of Rome . An image of Dea Roma on

9100-489: Was a technique for fixing a layer of gold leaf with a design between two fused layers of glass, developed in Hellenistic glass and revived in the 3rd century AD. There are a very few large designs, including a very fine group of portraits from the 3rd century with added paint, but the great majority of the around 500 survivals are roundels that are the cut-off bottoms of wine cups or glasses used to mark and decorate graves in

9200-423: Was also highly regarded. A very large body of sculpture has survived from about the 1st century BC onward, though very little from before, but very little painting remains, and probably nothing that a contemporary would have considered to be of the highest quality. Ancient Roman pottery was not a luxury product, but a vast production of "fine wares" in terra sigillata were decorated with reliefs that reflected

9300-435: Was also wrought gold and ivory fastened about them all; and many resemblances of the war, and those in several ways, and variety of contrivances, affording a most lively portraiture of itself. For there was to be seen a happy country laid waste, and entire squadrons of enemies slain; while some of them ran away, and some were carried into captivity; with walls of great altitude and magnitude overthrown and ruined by machines; with

9400-451: Was done using the a secco (dry) method, but some fresco paintings also existed in Roman times. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works. However, adding to the confusion is the fact that inscriptions may be recording the names of immigrant Greek artists from Roman times, not from Ancient Greek originals that were copied. The Romans entirely lacked

9500-417: Was drawn up: non-Romans could only offer him cult as divus jointly with dea Roma. Roma had an Imperial role as consort to the emperor and mother of the entire Roman people. In Greek city-states her iconography would have merged with that of the local Tyche ; this usually included a mural crown and cornucopia . Roma's seated pose, seen in more than half the known depictions, was also used for Athena ,

9600-481: Was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighbouring Etruscans , themselves greatly influenced by their Greek trading partners. An Etruscan speciality was near life size tomb effigies in terracotta , usually lying on top of a sarcophagus lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner in that period. As the expanding Roman Republic began to conquer Greek territory, at first in Southern Italy and then

9700-450: Was still not rendered accurately. Some landscapes were pure scenes of nature, particularly gardens with flowers and trees, while others were architectural vistas depicting urban buildings. Other landscapes show episodes from mythology, the most famous demonstrating scenes from the Odyssey . In the cultural point of view, the art of the ancient East would have known landscape painting only as

9800-631: Was the son of king Eumenes II and his queen Stratonice of Pergamon , and he was the nephew of Attalus II , whom he succeeded. "Philometor Euergetes" means "Loving-his-Mother, Benefactor" in Greek; he was so-called because of his close relationship with his mother Stratonice. He is the likely addressee of a fragmentary hymn by the poet Nicander which celebrates his heritage. According to Livy , Attalus III had little interest in ruling Pergamon, devoting his time to studying medicine , botany , gardening , and other pursuits. He had no male children or heirs of his own, and in his will he left his kingdom to

9900-506: Was virtually non-existent. In her "Amazonian" type, her usually single bare breast signifies the same boldness and fiercely maternal, nurturing virtues. In Hellenistic religious tradition, gods were served by priests and goddesses by priestesses but Roma's priesthood was male, perhaps in acknowledgment of the virility of Rome's military power. Priesthood of the Roma cult was competed among the highest ranking local elites. The assassination of Julius Caesar led to his apotheosis and cult as

10000-462: Was with exclusively warlike traits. Angelo Zanelli, in his work, decided to further characterize the statue by also providing the reference to Athena , Greek goddess of wisdom and the arts, as well as of war. The great statue of the deity emerges from a golden background. The presence of the goddess Roma in the Vittoriano underlines the irremissible will of the Unification of Italy patriots to have

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