DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0726
688
SCULPTURE UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.
height, becomes in some cases a movable stone wig, to be put off and on as the
fashion changed. This may be seen in busts now in the Capitoline Museum at
Rome. The changing fashion of the hair, fully represented on coins, enables
archaeologists to establish the date of many monuments otherwise problemati-
cal. Ladies had formerly appeared as draped goddesses : now they affect the
form of the nude Venus ; but their portrait-faces are in strange and repulsive
contrast to the traditional and ideal shape of the goddess.
Of public monuments, from the age of the Antonines, the pedestal of the
granite column, put up by Marcus Aurelius and L. Vefus in 161 A.U., to the
memory of Antoninus Pius, still exists in the Giardino della Pigna, of the Vati-
can, showing the feeble attainments of the day in semi-ideal as well as in realis-
Fig. 290. Apotheosis of Antoninus Pius and Faustina the Elder. Relief from the Base of the Column of Antoninus.
Vatican Gardens.
tic scenes. On three sides are funeral celebrations, most puerile in rendering;
but on the fourth, in somewhat better work, doubtless because following an old
type, is the apotheosis of the sainted emperor and his wife, the elder Faustina
(Fig. 290). Roma, with hand raised in adoration, and Romulus and Remus
nursing the wolf on her lowered shield, sits on one side; opposite to her, a
youth, holding an obelisk, personifies the Campus Martius, and thus localizes
the spot where the royal corpses were burned. In the air floats the colossal
genius of Eternity, marked as such by his snake and ball, and bearing on his
back the small images of Antoninus and of the veiled Faustina, accompanied
by two eagles, the symbols of their upward-flying souls. Although, when
explained, the scene is not lacking in a certain interest, still how cold and dis-
agreeable the tremendous lines of the genius of Eternity, how little movement
SCULPTURE UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.
height, becomes in some cases a movable stone wig, to be put off and on as the
fashion changed. This may be seen in busts now in the Capitoline Museum at
Rome. The changing fashion of the hair, fully represented on coins, enables
archaeologists to establish the date of many monuments otherwise problemati-
cal. Ladies had formerly appeared as draped goddesses : now they affect the
form of the nude Venus ; but their portrait-faces are in strange and repulsive
contrast to the traditional and ideal shape of the goddess.
Of public monuments, from the age of the Antonines, the pedestal of the
granite column, put up by Marcus Aurelius and L. Vefus in 161 A.U., to the
memory of Antoninus Pius, still exists in the Giardino della Pigna, of the Vati-
can, showing the feeble attainments of the day in semi-ideal as well as in realis-
Fig. 290. Apotheosis of Antoninus Pius and Faustina the Elder. Relief from the Base of the Column of Antoninus.
Vatican Gardens.
tic scenes. On three sides are funeral celebrations, most puerile in rendering;
but on the fourth, in somewhat better work, doubtless because following an old
type, is the apotheosis of the sainted emperor and his wife, the elder Faustina
(Fig. 290). Roma, with hand raised in adoration, and Romulus and Remus
nursing the wolf on her lowered shield, sits on one side; opposite to her, a
youth, holding an obelisk, personifies the Campus Martius, and thus localizes
the spot where the royal corpses were burned. In the air floats the colossal
genius of Eternity, marked as such by his snake and ball, and bearing on his
back the small images of Antoninus and of the veiled Faustina, accompanied
by two eagles, the symbols of their upward-flying souls. Although, when
explained, the scene is not lacking in a certain interest, still how cold and dis-
agreeable the tremendous lines of the genius of Eternity, how little movement