DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0682
CHAPTER XXXV.
GENERAL CONDITIONS OF SCULPTURE UNDER THE ROMANS. —KNOWN
ARTISTS AND THEIR WORKS.
Etruscan and Greek Influence. — Wax Images of Ancestors. — Honorary Statues. — Influence of Creek
Art after Roman Conquest. — Transportation of Sculptures and Paintings to Rome. — Roman
Opinion of the Fine Arts. — Portraits receiving Divine Honors. — Boundless Display- — Roman
Cods.— Representations of them. — Artists. — Slave Labor. — Multiplication of Copies. — Cheap
Material. — Venus di Medici. — Subjects of Sculpture. — New Attic School. — Artists. — The Bel-
vedere Torso. — Farnese Heracles. — Sosibios Vase. — Pasiteles. — Archaistic Art. — Group called
Orestes and Electra. — Venus Genetrix. — Artists from Asia Minor. — liorghese Warrior. — Reliefs.
The Romans, although belonging to the same great stock whence sprang
the Greeks, do not appear, like them, to have been artistically a gifted people.
Heirs of the civilization of Etruria, they long received from the Etruscans their
art-impulses, their own pre-eminently practical tendencies being directed to
developing the ideas of state, good government, and conquest. The Etruscans,
we are told, built for them their earlier temples, and executed their statues
in terra-cotta and bronze. Direct Greek influence, however, must also have
come in at an early date; since two masters, Damophilos and Gorgasos, from
Sicily, about 493 B.C., adorned the temple of Ceres in Rome with sculptures
and paintings, and, soon after, monuments to deity were put up."36 But during
the centuries when Athens was at its height, when a Pheidias and a Praxiteles
were executing their immortal works, we must not imagine that ideal sculpture
was encouraged in Rome. The custom of raising statues and colossi to the
gods, as consecrated gifts, was not practised, as it was in Greece, until after
the Samnitc wars, about 290 B.C.
The peculiarly Roman employment of sculpture appeared, not in connection
with gods, but with the Romans themselves, and in the line of portraiture, show-
ing how closely they followed the spirit of their Etruscan schoolmasters. Em-
phatically illustrating this spirit, were the wax masks (imagines), or portraits,
of the deceased ancestors, kept by patricians as a special ornament in their
houses, and wreathed with laurel on great feast-days. I237 On funeral occasions,
the important feature was the "procession of the ancestry," when the deceased
was often also represented by an image borne in the procession as living. Here
persons, often actors who had the size and shape of the departed ancestors,
wore these masks, as well as the garments of the deceased. Had the ancestor
644
GENERAL CONDITIONS OF SCULPTURE UNDER THE ROMANS. —KNOWN
ARTISTS AND THEIR WORKS.
Etruscan and Greek Influence. — Wax Images of Ancestors. — Honorary Statues. — Influence of Creek
Art after Roman Conquest. — Transportation of Sculptures and Paintings to Rome. — Roman
Opinion of the Fine Arts. — Portraits receiving Divine Honors. — Boundless Display- — Roman
Cods.— Representations of them. — Artists. — Slave Labor. — Multiplication of Copies. — Cheap
Material. — Venus di Medici. — Subjects of Sculpture. — New Attic School. — Artists. — The Bel-
vedere Torso. — Farnese Heracles. — Sosibios Vase. — Pasiteles. — Archaistic Art. — Group called
Orestes and Electra. — Venus Genetrix. — Artists from Asia Minor. — liorghese Warrior. — Reliefs.
The Romans, although belonging to the same great stock whence sprang
the Greeks, do not appear, like them, to have been artistically a gifted people.
Heirs of the civilization of Etruria, they long received from the Etruscans their
art-impulses, their own pre-eminently practical tendencies being directed to
developing the ideas of state, good government, and conquest. The Etruscans,
we are told, built for them their earlier temples, and executed their statues
in terra-cotta and bronze. Direct Greek influence, however, must also have
come in at an early date; since two masters, Damophilos and Gorgasos, from
Sicily, about 493 B.C., adorned the temple of Ceres in Rome with sculptures
and paintings, and, soon after, monuments to deity were put up."36 But during
the centuries when Athens was at its height, when a Pheidias and a Praxiteles
were executing their immortal works, we must not imagine that ideal sculpture
was encouraged in Rome. The custom of raising statues and colossi to the
gods, as consecrated gifts, was not practised, as it was in Greece, until after
the Samnitc wars, about 290 B.C.
The peculiarly Roman employment of sculpture appeared, not in connection
with gods, but with the Romans themselves, and in the line of portraiture, show-
ing how closely they followed the spirit of their Etruscan schoolmasters. Em-
phatically illustrating this spirit, were the wax masks (imagines), or portraits,
of the deceased ancestors, kept by patricians as a special ornament in their
houses, and wreathed with laurel on great feast-days. I237 On funeral occasions,
the important feature was the "procession of the ancestry," when the deceased
was often also represented by an image borne in the procession as living. Here
persons, often actors who had the size and shape of the departed ancestors,
wore these masks, as well as the garments of the deceased. Had the ancestor
644