Roman Historical Portraits. Ithaca, N. Varner, Eric R. Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Visiting The Met? Marble bust of a man. Bronze statue of an aristocratic boy. Sard ring stone.
Carnelian ring stone. Head of Augustus. Marble statue of a member of the imperial family. Marble portrait of the emperor Augustus.
Gold ring with carnelian intaglio portrait of Tiberius. Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula. Bronze portrait bust of a Roman matron. Marble head of an elderly woman. Sardonyx cameo portrait of the Emperor Augustus. Bronze sestertius of Titus. Bronze sestertius of Trajan. Gold aureus of Hadrian. He further disassociated himself from the Tetrarchs and soldier-emperors by having himself portrayed as youthful and serene, recalling the classicizing idealism of Augustan and Julio-Claudian portraits.
Trentinella, Rosemarie. Breckenridge, James D. Evanston, Ill. Pollini, John, ed. Roman Portraiture: Images of Character and Virtue. Exhibition catalogue. Toynbee, J. Roman Historical Portraits. Ithaca, N. Varner, Eric R. Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Visiting The Met? Head of Augustus. Marble head of an elderly woman. Marble portrait head of the Emperor Constantine I. Marble portrait of the emperor Antoninus Pius. Marble funerary altar of Cominia Tyche. Marble portrait of the emperor Augustus.
The depiction of the double chin on Antichous I demonstrates technique akin to that of a caricaturist. Adjacent to an understanding of the character of the subject comes the comedy of imagining his wobbling chin and beakish nose. He looks meddlesome and physically weak simply as a result of his having these physical features.
Yet, the tact of the artist in rendering this portrait of personality is not to be discounted. The artist must have taken some pains to ignore the minute detail of wrinkles, warts, moles, facial scars and otherwise to arrive at a singular concept of personality and, then, to rebuild all of these irregularities for the purpose of emphasizing only a few Hinks, By the heart of the Roman Hellenistic period, personality is the crux of portraiture.
The synthesis of Greek attention to an inner psychological context of thought combined with the distinctively Roman development of extracting every detail of physiognomic relativity renders masterful works like the stature of the Unknown Greek. He is more realistically alive than either the sculpture of Antisthenes or the silver tetradrachms.
He is more anatomically clear than Antisthenes, whose Greek sculptor succeeded in giving his piece a definite suggestion of inner context but fell short of the fine wrought technique seen here. His facial irregularities are not caricatured into exaggeration or understatement. He seems real, as though one could walk up to him and shake his hand and have no more or less revealed in terms of appearance than they would from an ordinary person.
The Western concept of the craft of Portraiture first germinated under the ideal conditions of the Roman Empire and would lay the stage for works so precise and intuitively fashioned that, subsequent to the collapse of Rome, their attention to the portrayal of individual personalities would not again be rivaled until the end of the Middle Ages.
The Roman Empire was a fulcrum upon which stability and, accordingly- the fate the arts- rested. For the Western World during it's time, Roman culture possessed the power to ignite innovation. But, in its appetite for geographical expansion, it simply became too large, too gregarious to manage.
At the same time, the collapse of order in the leadership which now lorded over the remnants of many ancient civilizations caused a chain reaction of smaller collapses in these subjugate provinces. Rome tied everything together. And, when she fell, she took with her all of the cultures she had once consumed. After hundreds of years of Roman rule and Roman protection, these cultures had ceased to remain secular.
The melting pot of Rome had deprived them of their own leadership, politics, culture and religion. The western world was to be steeped in the chaos and disorganization of the Dark Ages, and into this void disappeared the ripe conditions that had borne such authoritative portraits. Roman Copy.
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