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 excellent translation, with copious illustrations, which appeared in 1900; in the following year Riegl published the first (which, by reason of his untimely death, remains the only) volume of his Late Roman Industrial Art in Austria and Hungary, in the opening chapters of which he endeavours to show that the later transformations of Roman art in the 2nd and succeeding centuries after Christ continue to mark a definite advance. On the other hand, the originality of Roman art under the Empire was called in ques t ion by Josef Strzygowski, whose first important work on the subject, Orient oder Rom, appeared in 1901. Strzygowski holds that even in the imperial period, Rome was receptive rather than creative; that what is termed “Roman imperial art” is in reality the latest phase of Hellenistic art, whose chief centres are to be sought in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt; and that this late Hellenistic art was itself gradually transformed by the invading spirit of the East into that Byzantine art which is half Greek and half Oriental, but wholly un-Roman. The problem thus stated will presently be discussed; in the meantime it is to be noted that the principal monuments which fall within our province have been at length rendered accessible to students by a series of adequate reproductions. In sculpture, the reliefs of Trajan’s Column have been published by Cichorius, and those of the column of Marcus Aurelius by Petersen and others; in metal-work, the treasure of Bosco Reale has been reproduced in the Monuments Piot, and that of Hildesheim has been published by the authorities of the Berlin Museum; a series of reproductions, including all the important examples of Roman painting, is issued by the firm of Bruckmann under the supervision of Paul Herrmann; and the ancient paintings preserved in the Vatican library, which include some of the most famous examples of the art, were published and described by Dr Nogara in 1907. The discussion of the date to be assigned to the Trophy of Trajan at Adam-Klissi in the Dobruja, initiated by Adolf Furtwängler, has led to a closer study of the remains of Roman provincial art; and the discovery of the foundations of the Ara Pacis Augustae at Rome, together with additional remains of its sculptured decoration, has given an impulse to the study of Roman historical monuments. In this field important contributions to knowledge have been made by members of the British school at Rome, which will be noticed below. Finally, the history of Roman sculpture has for the first time been systematically and comprehensively treated by Mrs Strong in a handbook whose copious and well-chosen illustrations add greatly to its value. Thus the necessary equipment has been furnished for students of the problem presented by Roman art.

(2) National Roman Art; Landmarks of its History.—It is impossible to speak of a specifically Roman national art until we approach the latest period of Republican history. The germs of artistic endowment which existed in the Roman character were not developed until her political institutions were matured and her supremacy in the Mediterranean established. Up to that time such works of art as were produced in, or imported into, Rome were without exception Greek or Etruscan. Both in Etruria and in Latium Greek artists were commissioned to decorate the temples in which wood and terra-cotta took the place of the marble which Greece alone could afford to use. In 496, according to tradition, two Greek artists, Damophilos and Gorgasos, decorated the temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera with paintings and sculpture; when the temple was restored by Augustus their terra-cotta reliefs were carefully removed and framed. But most of the early sculpture preserved in Rome doubtless belonged to the “Tuscan” school, whose works Pliny quotes as evidence that there was an art of statuary native to Italy. It is true that Etruscan art was dependent for its motives and technique on Greek models; but in its portraiture—notably in the reclining figures which adorn Etruscan sarcophagi—we can trace the uncompromising realism and close attention to detail which are native to Italian

soil; the fragments of temple-sculptures which have been preserved are of less value, since, if not the work of Greeks, they are entirely Greek in conception. Roman portraiture undoubtedly continues the Etruscan tradition. It was a common custom in Etruria to decorate the urn containing the ashes of the dead with a lid in the form of the human head (such urns are called canopi), and the same desire to record the features of the departed produced the waxen masks, or imagines, which were preserved in the houses of the Roman aristocracy. In architecture, too, Roman builders learnt much from their Etruscan neighbours, from whom they borrowed the characteristic form of their temples, and perhaps also the prominent use of the arch and vault. But the stream of Etruscan influence was met by a counter-current from the south, where the Greek colonies in Campania provided a natural channel by which Hellenic ideas reached the Latin race; and Roman architects soon abandoned the purely Etruscan type of temple for one which closely followed western Greek models. The conquests of the later Republic, however, brought them into more direct contact with the art of Greece proper. Beginning from 212 , when Marcellus despoiled Syracuse of its principal statues, every victorious general adorned his triumph with masterpieces of Greek art, whether of sculpture or of painting, and, when Philhellenism became the ruling fashion at Rome, wealthy connoisseurs formed private collections drawn from the Greek provinces—Greek craftsmen, moreover, were employed in the decoration of the palaces of the Roman nobles and capitalists, which scarcely differed from those of the great Hellenistic cities. Except in portraiture, there was nothing characteristically Roman in the art which flourished in Rome in the time of Caesar and Cicero. But the remains of an altar, preserved partly at Munich and partly in the Louvre (Plate II. fig. 10), which is believed with good reason to have been set up by Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus shortly before 30, furnish an early example of the historical, or, to speak more exactly, commemorative art, to whose development the Empire gave so powerful an impulse. On the one face of the altar we find a Greek subject—the marriage of Poseidon and Amphitrite,—on the other a Roman sacrifice, the suovetaurilia, with other scenes from the life of the army. Augustus enlisted art, as he did literature, in the service of the new order. The remarkable technical dexterity which characterizes all forms of art in this period—silver plate and stucco decoration, as well as sculpture in the round or in relief—is purely Greek; but the form is filled with a new content. For Augustus determined to enlist art as well as literature in the service of the new régime, and this purpose was served not only by public monuments, such as the Ara Pacis Augustae (Plate II. figs. 11-15), but by the masterpieces of the silversmith’s and gem-engraver’s art (Plate VII. figs. 32-37). In the art, as in the literature of the Augustan age, classicism was the dominant note, and the naturalism so congenial to the Italian temperament was repressed, though never extinguished. The result of this was that under the Julio-Claudian dynasty academic tradition filled the place of inspiration, and Roman art failed to discover its vocation. A change came under the Flavian emperors. The painters who decorated with fairy landscapes the walls of Roman palaces, untrammelled by the conventions of official art, introduced into Rome a summary method of working, which has much in common with that of the modern impressionist school; and the sculptors of the Flavian period laid to heart the lesson taught by their successful “illusionism” (to borrow Wickhoff’s term). We shall see that this is true of all forms of sculpture—historical sculpture, portraiture and decorative ornament; and we are entitled to rank this Flavian art as the specific creation of imperial Rome, whatever may have been the precise nationality of the individual workers who adorned the new capital of the world. But this phase was of short duration; and the Roman spirit, which in harmony with that of Greece had produced such brilliant results, triumphed under Trajan and found its characteristic expression in the “epic in stone” with which his column is adorned. Wickhoff claims the “continuous”