Transcript Intro to Rome Video

Roman Art
and Architecture
Intro to Rome Video
https://www.khanacademy.org/human
ities/ancient-artcivilizations/roman/beginners-guiderome/v/a-tour-through-ancient-romein-320-c-e
13 Min
• At the same time that the Etruscan
civilization was flourishing, the Latinspeaking inhabitants of Rome began to
develop into a formidable power.
• For a time, kings of Etruscan lineage ruled
them, but in 509 BCE the Romans
overthrew them and formed a republic
centered in Rome. The Etruscans
themselves were absorbed by the Roman
Republic at the end of the third century
BCE, by which time Rome had steadily
expanded its territory in many directions.
• The Romans unified what is now Italy and,
after defeating their rival, the North African
city-state of Carthage, they established an
empire that encompassed the entire
Mediterranean region.
• Those who were conquered by the
Romans gradually assimilated Roman
legal, administrative, and cultural
structures that endured for some five
centuries- and in the eastern
Mediterranean until the fifteenth century
CE- and left a lasting mark on the
civilizations that emerged in Europe.
Origins of Rome
• The Romans saw themselves as
descendants of heroic ancestors.
Archaeologists and historians have
established that in Neolithic times, people
settled in permanent villages in the plains
of Latium, south of the Tiber River, and on
the Palatine, one of the seven hills that
would eventually become the city of
Rome.
Roman Religion
• The Romans assimilated Greek gods,
myths, and religious beliefs and practices
into their state religion. They also deified
their emperors. Worship of ancient gods
mingled with homage to past rulers, and
oaths of allegiance to the living ruler made
the official religion a political duty..
• Many Romans adopted the so-called
mystery religions of the people they
conquered. However, these were
unauthorized religions that flourished
alongside the state religion, with its
Olympian deities and deified emperors,
despite occasional government efforts to
suppress them.
The Republic
• Early Rome was governed by kings and
an advisory body of leading citizens called
the Senate. The population was divided
into two classes: a wealthy and powerful
upper class, the patricians, and lower
class, the plebeians.
• In 509 BCE, Romans overthrew the last
Etruscan king and established the Roman
Republic as an oligarchy, a government by
the aristocrats that would last about 450
years.
• As a result of its stable form of
government, and especially of its
encouragement of military conquest, by
275 BCE Rome controlled the entire Italian
peninsula. By 146 BCE, Rome had
defeated its great rival, Carthage, on the
north coast of Africa, and taken control of
the western Mediterranean.
• By the mid second century BCE, Rome
had taken Macedonia and Greece, and by
44 BCE, it had conquered most of Gaul
(present-day France) as well as the
eastern Mediterranean.
• Egypt remained independent until
Octavian defeated Mark Antony and
Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31
BCE.
• During the Republic, Roman art was
rooted in its Etruscan heritage, but
territorial expansion brought wider
exposure to the arts of other cultures.
• Like the Etruscans, the Romans admired
Greek art. The Romans used Greek
designs and Greek orders in their
architecture, imported Greek art, and
employed Greek artists. In 146 BCE, for
example, they stripped the Greek city of
Corinth of its art treasures and shipped
them back to Rome.
Portrait Sculpture
• Portrait sculpture of the Republican period
sought to create lifelike images based on
careful observation of their subjects,
objectives that were related to the
Romans’ veneration of their ancestors and
the making and public displaying of death
masks of deceased relatives.
• Actual wax death masks of distinguished
ancestors are put on display for public
occasions, mostly funerals.
• Perhaps growing out of this tradition of
maintaining images of ancestors as death
masks, a new Roman artistic ideal
emerged during the Republican period in
relation to portrait sculpture, an ideal quite
different from the one we encountered in
Greek Classicism.
• Instead of generalizing a human face,
smoothed of its imperfections and caught
in a moment of detached abstraction, this
new Roman idealization emphasizedrather than suppressed- the hallmarks of
advanced age and the distinguishing
aspects of individual likenesses.
• This mode is most
prominent in portraits
of a Roman
patricians, whose
time-worn faces
embody the wisdom
and experience that
come with old age.
• Frequently we take these
portraits of wrinkled elders at
face value, as highly realistic
and faithful descriptions of
actual human beingscontrasting Roman realism
with Greek idealism- but there
is good reason to think that
these portraits actually
conform to a particularly
Roman type of idealization that
underscores the effects of
aging on the human face.
• B.C., which stands for "Before Christ," is used to date
events before the birth of Jesus. A.D. is the
abbreviation for the Latin phrase anno Domini, which
means "in the year of our Lord," and is used for dates
after Jesus's birth. This system of dating has been
used for many years by Western archaeologists.
Today, however, with a growing understanding that
not all archaeologists are Christians, some
archaeologists prefer to use the terms: Before the
Common Era (B.C.E.) and the Common Era (C.E.),
which are exactly the same as B.C. and A.D. but
have nothing to do with Christianity.
Early Empire
• n 31 B.C.E. Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar,
defeated Cleopatra and Mark Anthony at Actium. This
brought the last civil war of the republic to an end. Although
it was hoped by many that the republic could be restored, it
soon became clear that a new political system was
forming: the emperor became the focus of the empire and
its people. Although, in theory, Augustus (as Octavian
became known) was only the first citizen and ruled by
consent of the Senate, he was in fact the empire's supreme
authority. As emperor he could pass his powers to the heir
he decreed and was a king in all but name.
Early Empire
• https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/
ancient-art-civilizations/roman/earlyempire/v/augustus-of-primaporta-1stcentury-c-e-vatican-museums
• Augustus of Prima Porta (p.198)
• 5 min.
• class quiz
Ara Pacis Augustae
Still-Life Painting
Compositions of inanimate objects
A still-life panel from
Herculaneum, a
community in the vicinity
of Mount Vesuvius near
Pompeii, depicts
everyday domestic
objects-still-green
peaches just picked from
the tree and a glass jar
half-filled with water.
• The items have been carefully arranged
on two stepped shelves to give the
composition clarity and balance. A strong,
clear light floods the picture from left to
right, casting shadows, picking up
highlights, and enhancing the illusion of
solid objects in real space.
Quiz- Rome #2
1. Who was the architect for the Forum of
Trajan?
A. DOMITIAN, Trajan’s brother.
B. VESPASIAN, Trajan’s long
time friend.
C. APOLLODORUS of
DAMASCUS, Trajan’s chief
military engineer during the
Dacian wars.
D. POLYBIUS, who was an
author, architect, and philosopher.
2. The spiral frieze of
Trajan’s Column tells the
story of…?
• A. The Dacian wars.
• B. Trajan’s life, from birth to death.
• C. Trajan’s life as well as his family’s
life.
• D. The Philopes wars.
3.What seems to have been invented here?
• A. The idea of painting the shaft
instead of creating a low relief.
• B. The idea of creating a column to
honor a mortal.
• C. The idea of covering the shaft of a
colossal freestanding column with a
continuous spiral narrative frieze.
• D. The idea of adding a statue to the
top of the column.
4. Who was the
emperor during the
creation of the
Pantheon?
•
•
•
•
A. Trajan
B. Augustus
C. Nero
D. Hadrian
• 5. Name one reason why the
artists/architects of the Arch of
Constantine reused statues
and reliefs from monuments of
Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus
Aurelius.
For your test on Friday and
for the AP/IB exams, you
should know who was
the ruler/king/emperor during the
time of each artwork.
ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE DEFINITION
Same Picture
Without Atmospheric Perspective
With Atmospheric Perspective
Simple definition: as colors go into the distance, two things happen. First, they
become cooler (the atmosphere colors them), and they get lighter in value. A
dark shadow in the distance is never as dark as the shadow at your feet. (Also
known as aerial perspective.)
elfwood.lysator.liu.se/.../perspctv.html
Atmospheric Perspective – 2nd Example
userwww.sfsu.edu/.../itec745/final/index.htm
Atmospheric
perspective
Gardenscape –
SECOND STYLE
THIRD STYLE Roman Wall Painting (Ornate Style) pictorial illusion is confined to "framed" images, where
even the "framing" is painted on. The overall
appearance is flat rather than a 3-d illusion of space.
Predominantly monochrome backgrounds.
FOURTH STYLE Roman Wall Painting
Ixion Room
Domus Aurea (Golden
House) of Nero
(AKA Intricate Style) confines full 3-dimensional illusion to the "framed images,"
which are placed like pictures in an exhibition. The images do not relate to one
another nor do they present a narrative, as in the Second Style. Also characterized
by the open vistas and the use of aerial perspective, as well as the elaborate
architectural framing. Irrational fantasies, crowded and confused compositions, and
sometimes garish color combinations.