Transcript Backgrounds to English Literature

Backgrounds to English
Literature
Lecture 19: Roman art
=General overview of Roman art
-Covering almost 1,000 years, from Europe into Africa and Asia.
-Origin of Roman art: the Roman art may begin with the legendary
founding of the Roman Republic around 509 B.C., until 330 C.E.
-NB) the Byzantine art.
-Influence from the Greek:
1. The city of Rome was a melting pot, and the Romans had no qualms
about adapting artistic influences from other cultures.
2. The Romans had an inferiority complex in the face of Greek artistic
achievement
3. In particular, its painting and sculpture was based on Greek traditions
4. The Romans recycled designs from Greek art, particularly, Greek
sculpture
4.1. Greek poses were reworked with Roman clothes and accessories
4.2. Greek statues were supplied headless, to enable the buyer to fit his
own portrait head. Ex) the bronze statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius from
the Greek statue “Doryphorus.”
=Main Characteristics of Roman art
-In spite of such inferiority complex and the process of adoptions and
adaptations, the Roman art has its own unique and significant
innovations, achievements, and masterpieces
-Many types of art practised by the Romans: sculpture (bronze and
marble statuary, sarcophagi), fine art painting (murals, portraiture,
vase-painting), and decorative art (metalwork, mosaics, jewellery,
ivory carving)
-Inventions: the invention of the dome and the groin vault, the
development of concrete and a European-wide network of roads and
bridges.
-Architecture: its urban architecture was ground-breaking
1. Rome's greatest contribution to the history of art is in the field of
architectural design.
2. After the turn of the Millennium, Roman architects and engineers
developed techniques for urban building on a massive scale, along
with Rome's development of the arch and the dome, and its mastery
of strong and low-cost materials like concrete and bricks: Circus
Maximus / Colosseum / The Arch of Titus / Baths of Trajan /
Pantheon
3. It was during the age of Emperor Trajan (98-117 CE) and Emperor
Hadrian (117-138 CE) that Rome reached the zenith of its
architectural glory: numerous building programs of monuments, baths,
aqueducts, palaces, temples and mausoleums. Many of the buildings
from this era and later, served as models for architects of the Italian
Renaissance,
-Sculpture:
1. A constant expression of seriousness, with none of the Greek
conceptualism or introspection: The mood, pose and facial features of
the Roman statue of an Emperor was solemn and unsmiling.
2. As Rome grew more confident from the reign of Augustus, its
leaders might appear in more magnanimous poses, but gravitas and an
underlying sense of Roman greatness was never far from the surface.
3. Realism: the highly detailed reliefs on Trajan's Column and the
Column of Marcus Aurelius
-Painting: the greatest innovation of Roman painters was the
development of landscape painting, a genre in which the Greeks
showed little interest.
-Purposes of Roman art:
1. The dissemination of Roman values
2. To communicate the power and majesty of Rome, expecting a
respect for Roman power.
-Legacy: classical Roman art has been immensely influential on many
subsequent cultures, through revivalist movements like Neoclassical
architecture, which have shaped much European and American
architecture