Roman Art and Architecture

Roman Art and Architecture HW: Read pgs 207-231 Quiz Monday Unit 2 Test, Cue Cards, and Timeline due Friday Oct. 17

Intro to Rome Video https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/beginners-guide-rome/v/a-tour-through-ancient-rome-in-320-c-e 13 Min

At the same time that the Etruscan civilization was flourishing, the Latin-speaking inhabitants of Rome began to develop into a formidable power.

For a time, kings of Etruscan lineage ruled them, but in 509 BCE the Romans overthrew them and formed a republic centered in Rome. The Etruscans themselves were absorbed by the Roman Republic at the end of the third century BCE, by which time Rome had steadily expanded its territory in many directions.

The Romans unified what is now Italy and, after defeating their rival, the North African city-state of Carthage, they established an empire that encompassed the entire Mediterranean region.

Those who were conquered by the Romans gradually assimilated Roman legal, administrative, and cultural structures that endured for some five centuries- and in the eastern Mediterranean until the fifteenth century CE- and left a lasting mark on the civilizations that emerged in Europe.

Origins of Rome • The Romans saw themselves as descendants of heroic ancestors. Archaeologists and historians have established that in Neolithic times, people settled in permanent villages in the plains of Latium, south of the Tiber River, and on the Palatine, one of the seven hills that would eventually become the city of Rome.

Roman Religion • The Romans assimilated Greek gods, myths, and religious beliefs and practices into their state religion. They also deified their emperors. Worship of ancient gods mingled with homage to past rulers, and oaths of allegiance to the living ruler made the official religion a political duty..

Many Romans adopted the so-called mystery religions of the people they conquered. However, these were unauthorized religions that flourished alongside the state religion, with its Olympian deities and deified emperors, despite occasional government efforts to suppress them.

The Republic • Early Rome was governed by kings and an advisory body of leading citizens called the Senate. The population was divided into two classes: a wealthy and powerful upper class, the patricians, and lower class, the plebeians.

In 509 BCE, Romans overthrew the last Etruscan king and established the Roman Republic as an oligarchy, a government by the aristocrats that would last about 450 years.

As a result of its stable form of government, and especially of its encouragement of military conquest, by 275 BCE Rome controlled the entire Italian peninsula. By 146 BCE, Rome had defeated its great rival, Carthage, on the north coast of Africa, and taken control of the western Mediterranean.

By the mid second century BCE, Rome had taken Macedonia and Greece, and by 44 BCE, it had conquered most of Gaul (present-day France) as well as the eastern Mediterranean. • Egypt remained independent until Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE.

During the Republic, Roman art was rooted in its Etruscan heritage, but territorial expansion brought wider exposure to the arts of other cultures.

Like the Etruscans, the Romans admired Greek art. The Romans used Greek designs and Greek orders in their architecture, imported Greek art, and employed Greek artists. In 146 BCE, for example, they stripped the Greek city of Corinth of its art treasures and shipped them back to Rome.

Portrait Sculpture • Portrait sculpture of the Republican period sought to create lifelike images based on careful observation of their subjects, objectives that were related to the Romans’ veneration of their ancestors and the making and public displaying of death masks of deceased relatives.

Actual wax death masks of distinguished ancestors are put on display for public occasions, mostly funerals.

Perhaps growing out of this tradition of maintaining images of ancestors as death masks, a new Roman artistic ideal emerged during the Republican period in relation to portrait sculpture, an ideal quite different from the one we encountered in Greek Classicism.

Instead of generalizing a human face, smoothed of its imperfections and caught in a moment of detached abstraction, this new Roman idealization emphasized- rather than suppressed- the hallmarks of advanced age and the distinguishing aspects of individual likenesses.

This mode is most prominent in portraits of a Roman patricians, whose time-worn faces embody the wisdom and experience that come with old age.

Frequently we take these portraits of wrinkled elders at face value, as highly realistic and faithful descriptions of actual human beings- contrasting Roman realism with Greek idealism- but there is good reason to think that these portraits actually conform to a particularly Roman type of idealization that underscores the effects of aging on the human face.

B.C., which stands for "Before Christ," is used to date events before the birth of Jesus. A.D. is the abbreviation for the Latin phrase anno Domini, which means "in the year of our Lord," and is used for dates after Jesus's birth. This system of dating has been used for many years by Western archaeologists. Today, however, with a growing understanding that not all archaeologists are Christians, some archaeologists prefer to use the terms: Before the Common Era (B.C.E.) and the Common Era (C.E.), which are exactly the same as B.C. and A.D. but have nothing to do with Christianity.

Early Empire • n 31 B.C.E. Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, defeated Cleopatra and Mark Anthony at Actium. This brought the last civil war of the republic to an end. Although it was hoped by many that the republic could be restored, it soon became clear that a new political system was forming: the emperor became the focus of the empire and its people. Although, in theory, Augustus (as Octavian became known) was only the first citizen and ruled by consent of the Senate, he was in fact the empire's supreme authority. As emperor he could pass his powers to the heir he decreed and was a king in all but name.

Early Empire • https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/early-empire/v/augustus-of-primaporta-1st-century-c-e-vatican-museums • Augustus of Prima Porta (p.198) • 5 min. • class quiz

Ara Pacis Augustae

Still-Life PaintingCompositions of inanimate objects A still-life panel from Herculaneum, a community in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius near Pompeii, depicts everyday domestic objects-still-green peaches just picked from the tree and a glass jar half-filled with water.

The items have been carefully arranged on two stepped shelves to give the composition clarity and balance. A strong, clear light floods the picture from left to right, casting shadows, picking up highlights, and enhancing the illusion of solid objects in real space.

Quiz- Rome #2

1. Who was the architect for the Forum of Trajan? A. DOMITIAN, Trajan’s brother. B. VESPASIAN, Trajan’s long time friend. C. APOLLODORUS of DAMASCUS, Trajan’s chief military engineer during the Dacian wars. D. POLYBIUS, who was an author, architect, and philosopher.

2. The spiral frieze of Trajan’s Column tells the story of…? • A. The Dacian wars. • B. Trajan’s life, from birth to death. • C. Trajan’s life as well as his family’s life. • D. The Philopes wars.

3.What seems to have been invented here? • A. The idea of painting the shaft instead of creating a low relief. • B. The idea of creating a column to honor a mortal. • C. The idea of covering the shaft of a colossal freestanding column with a continuous spiral narrative frieze. • D. The idea of adding a statue to the top of the column.

4. Who was the emperor during the creation of the Pantheon? • A. Trajan • B. Augustus • C. Nero • D. Hadrian

5. Name one reason why the artists/architects of the Arch of Constantine reused statues and reliefs from monuments of Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius.

For your test on Friday and for the AP/IB exams, you should know who was the ruler/king/emperor during the time of each artwork.

ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE DEFINITION Same Picture Without Atmospheric Perspective With Atmospheric Perspective Simple definition: as colors go into the distance, two things happen. First, they become cooler (the atmosphere colors them), and they get lighter in value. A dark shadow in the distance is never as dark as the shadow at your feet. (Also known as aerial perspective.) elfwood.lysator.liu.se/.../perspctv.html

Atmospheric Perspective – 2nd Example userwww.sfsu.edu/.../itec745/final/index.htm

Flashcard Atmospheric perspective Gardenscape – SECOND STYLE Gardner’s http://arthist.cla.umn.edu/aict/images/ancient/romart/512/014.jpg

Flashcard Gardner’s http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/%7Ejjd5t/region-vi/sallust/ptg_jd-95.jpg www.accla.org/actaaccla/ramage.html

FOURTH STYLE Roman Wall Painting Flashcard Ixion Room Domus Aurea (Golden House) of Nero (AKA Intricate Style) confines full 3-dimensional illusion to the "framed images," which are placed like pictures in an exhibition. The images do not relate to one another nor do they present a narrative, as in the Second Style. Also characterized by the open vistas and the use of aerial perspective, as well as the elaborate architectural framing. Irrational fantasies, crowded and confused compositions, and sometimes garish color combinations. Gardner’s www.accla.org/actaaccla/ramage.html

Roman Art and Architecture