1. Backgrounds to English Literature
Lecture 19: Roman art

2. =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.”

3. =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.

4. 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 ( CE) and Emperor Hadrian ( 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.

5. 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