a better example of the art of this period is to be seen in the relief (Plate IV. fig. 20) now in the Palazzo Sacchetti, recently published by Mr A. J. B. Wace,[1] which probably represents the presentation of Caracalla to the senate as the destined successor of his father. The squat figures of the senators, their grouping, which, though not lacking in naturalism and a certain effectiveness, is not in its main lines aesthetic, and the lavish use of deeply drilled ornament, are features which leave no doubt as to the period to which this work should be assigned. Rome, however, could still boast a school of portrait-sculptors, whose work was of no ordinary merit. The bronze statue of Septimius Severus, which passed into the Somzée collection, has been pronounced by Furtwängler to be of much earlier date, except for the head of the emperor, and we cannot therefore feel confidence in using it as a measure of the artistic achievements of Severus's reign; but the busts of Caracalla, which represent the tyrant in his later years, are masterly both in conception and in execution.
In the second quarter of the 3rd century A.D., when the Empire was torn by internal strife, threatened in its very existence by the inroads of barbarism, and hastening towards economic ruin, art could no longer flourish, and monuments of sculpture become scarce, if we except portraits and sarcophagi. The busts of this period are easily distinguished by the treatment of the hair and beard, which seem to have been closely clipped, and are indicated by a multitude of fine chisel strokes on a roughened surface. But, rough as these technical methods may seem, the artists of the time used them with wonderful effect, and the portraits of the emperor Philip (A.D. 244-49) in the Braccio Nuovo, and an unknown Roman in the Capitoline Museum (Plate I. fig. 7), are hardly to be surpassed in their delineation of craft and cruelty. Amongst the sarcophagi of the 3rd century we select, in preference to those adorned with scenes of Greek mythology, the fine example in the Museo delle Terme (formerly in the Ludovisi collection) decorated with a mêlée of Romans and Orientals (Plate IV. fig. 23), the principal figure—whose portrait is also to be seen in the Capitoline Museum—has been identified by Mr A. H. S. Yeames as C. Furius Sabinius Aquila Timesitheus, the minister and father-in-law of Gordian III. (d. A.D. 244). Even after the middle of the century, when the Empire was for a time dismembered, portrait-sculpture put forth fresh evidences of life and vigour. Gallienus, who was himself a dilettante and doubtless largely endowed with personal vanity, seems to have called into being a naturalistic school of sculptors, who harked back to the models of the later Antonine period, so that it is not always easy to distinguish the busts of his time from those of a much earlier date. The Louvre bust of the emperor (Plate I. fig. 8) will serve as a type of these works. But this singular renaissance was as short-lived as the eclectic revival of classicism under Hadrian. It is remarkable that the portrait of Gallienus is the last which can be identified by truly individual traits. The period of storm and stress which followed his death has left little or no monumental material for the historian of sculpture; and when the curtain again rises on the art of the new monarchy founded by Diocletian and perfected by Constantine, we seem to move in a new world. The East has triumphed over the West. Just as in Egyptian and, speaking generally, in all oriental art, before the revelation of true plastic principles, which we owe to the Greek genius, the law of “frontality” was universally operative, i.e. the pose of sculptured figures was rigidly symmetrical and without lateral curvature, so the portraits of Constantine and his successors are discerned at a glance by their stiff pose and fixed and stony stare. The fact is that the secret of organic structure has been lost; the bust (or statue) is no longer a true portrait, a block of marble made to pulsate with the life of the subject represented, but a monument. It was thus that the absolute monarchs of the Empire, before whom their subjects prostrated themselves in mute adoration, preferred to be portrayed; and we cannot help recalling Ammianus's description[2] of the entry of Constantius II. into Rome (A.D. 356). The emperor rode in a golden chariot, turning his head neither to the right nor to the left, but gazing impassively before him “tanquam figmentum hominis.” The description fits such a portrait as that of an unknown personage of the 4th century in the Capitoline Museum (Plate I. fig. 9), which has found a panegyrist in Riegl. It remains to note that the narrow bands of relief on the Arch of Constantine, some of which probably date from the reign of Diocletian,[3] partake of the same monumental character as the single statues of the time. Where the nature of the subject permits, as in the case of the reliefs here represented (Plate III. fig. 19), the frontality of the central figure, and the strict symmetry of the grouping, Which imparts an almost geometrical regularity to the main lines of the composition, are calculated for architectonic rather than for plastic effect. The breath of organic life has ceased to inspire the marble.
We have confined ourselves in the above section to tracing the course of development in what we may call official Roman sculpture, represented in the main, as is natural, by the monuments of the capital. The products of local schools cannot here be treated in detail. The difficult problems which they raise are best illustrated by the case of “Trajan's trophy” at Adam-Klissi in the Dobruja. Although the very name of the monument might seem to furnish sufficient evidence of its date, the late Professor Furtwängler stoutly maintained that Trajan did but restore a monument dating from 29 B.C.[4] He called attention to the uniformity in style of the grave-monuments of soldiers from north Italy, serving in the legions of the Rhine and Danube; these date from the early imperial period, and represent (according to Furtwängler) a traditional “legionary style.” It may be admitted that they are eminently Italian in their hard realistic character; but the tradition was not extinct in the Trajanic period, so that the analogy between these monuments and its rudely carved figures is inconclusive, and the ornament of the trophy, which is far from being homogeneous, contains, as Studniczka[5] has observed, oriental elements which could not possibly be found in sculpture of the 1st century B.C. Local tradition may also be traced, e.g. in southern France, where the Hellenic influence which penetrated by way of Massilia was still strongly felt under the Julio-Claudian dynasty, as the sculptures of the tomb of the Julii at St Rémy and the triumphal arches of Orange and Carpentras suffice to prove. Gallo-Roman art, on the other hand, has a physiognomy of its own, whose outlines have been traced by M. Salomon Reinach (Antiquités nationales; bronzes figurés de la Gaule romaine, Introduction). In the Rhineland we find, at a later period, a singular school of realistic sculptors at work; the museum at Trier contains a number of their grave-monuments decorated with scenes of daily life.[6] Nor must we omit to mention the Palmyrene sculptors of the 3rd century A.D., whose portrait-statues give us the clue to the origin of the “frontal” style of the Constantinian period.[7]
(c) Painting and Mosaic.—The arts whose proper medium is colour enjoyed a popularity with the ancients and with the Romans, no less than with the Greeks, at least as great as that of sculpture; we need go no further for evidence of this than the statement of Pliny[8] that Julius Caesar paid eighty talents (£20,000) for the “Ajax and Medea” of Timomachus of Byzantium, which he placed in his newly built forum. But we are in a difficult position when we try
- ↑ Papers of the British School at Rome, iv. pl. xxxiv., from which fig. 15 is taken.
- ↑ Amm. Marc. xvi. 10. 10.
- ↑ See Mr Wace's article in Papers of the British School at Rome, iv. pp. 270 ff.
- ↑ His view is accepted by Mrs Strong (Roman Sculpture, p. 99).
- ↑ “Tropaeum Trajani” (Abhandlungen der sächs. Gesellsch. der Wissenschaften, xxii., pp. 88 ff.).
- ↑ Hettner, Illustrierter Führer durch das National Museum zu Trier (1903), pp. 2 ff.
- ↑ Some fine examples are in the Jacobsen collection; see Arndt-Bruckmann, Griechische und römische Portraits, pls. 59, 60.
- ↑ H.N. xxxv. 136.
