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Was Roman Art of the First Centuries B.C. and A.D. classicizing?1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
As our knowledge and understanding of ancient art increase it is possible to discard old theories that impede the proper appreciation of a certain period. I should like to place in this category of outworn creeds what is commonly called the classicizing or neo-classical art of the first centuries B.C. and A.D., as well as later. It has been thought that during that time there was a reaction from the baroque taste of the late Hellenistic period and a return to the quieter, serener spirit of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.; and that this is indicated both by the many famous works of the classical epoch that were copied and recopied in the late Republican and early Imperial periods and by the sculptures in that general style that were created at that time. Pasiteles and his school have been credited with being pioneers in this neo-classical style.
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- Copyright ©Gisela M. A. Richter 1958. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Footnotes
1
This article is based on a paper read to the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies on 25 June, 1957.
References
2 Vermeule, , Numis. Circular, LXI, 1953Google Scholar, col. 450, LXII, 1954, col. 101; Ashmole, , BMQ, xx, 1955–1956, 71 ffGoogle Scholar.
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4 Helbig, Führer 3, nos. 949, 948, 951. On the site of the Horti Maecenatis cf. Platner and Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, 1929, 269.
5 cf. in particular the detailed exposition by Becatti, , ‘Attikà, Saggio sulla scultura attica dell'ellenismo,’ in Rivista del R. 1st. d'Archeologiae Storia dell'Arte, VII, 1940, 7–116Google Scholar, and the many references there cited.
6 cf. Becatti, o.c., 48 f., fig. 30.
7 ibid., 25 ff., figs. 6, 7.
8 ibid., 27 f., fig. 8; Laurenzi, Ritratti greci, no. 68.
9 cf. Hauser, Die neu-attischen Reliefs, 1889, and most modern books on Greek and Roman sculpture. Hauser was among the first to recognize that these reliefs were not original works, as had been thought by Brunn and others, but copies and adaptations of earlier creations. Cf. on this subject also the studies on archaistic sculpture: Bulle, , ‘Archaisierende griechische Rundplastik,’ in Abh. Bayr. Ak., xxx, 2, 1918Google Scholar; Schmidt, Archaistische Kunst, 1922; Karouzos, , ‘Archaistika’, Arch. Delt., x, 1926, 91 ff.Google Scholar; and Löwy, Neuattische Kunst, 1922 (Bibliothek der Kunstgeschichte, herausg. von H. Tietze, vol. 35), each of which marks an important step forward in our understanding of the intricate subject of the relation of Roman to Greek art.
10 Loewy, Inschriften griechischer Bildhauer (1885), nos. 155 (Pergamon), 165–7 (Rhodes), 242 ff. (Delos).
11 Schefold, Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner u. Denker, 1943, 106–7; Laurenzi, Ritratti, no. 61.
12 Schefold, o.c., 126–7; Laurenzi, Ritratti, no. 76; Richter, , ‘Greek Portraits’, Collection Latomus, xx, 1955, 40, fig. 24Google Scholar (as reconstructed by M. Charbonneaux).
13 Athens, National Museum, no. 4414. Illustrated in Polemon, IV, 1951Google Scholar, by Kotzias, , and briefly described in BCH, LXXIV, 1949, 291Google Scholar. To be published at length by Ch. Karouzos. My pl. III, fig. 8 is reproduced from Polemon with the kind permission of Mr. Karouzos.
14 On the pointing process cf. now Appendix I in my Ancient Italy, 105 ff., and the references there cited.
15 Winter, , Altertümer von Pergamon, VII, 23 ff.Google Scholar, 33 ff., nos. 23, 24, pls. VII, VIII.
16 Dyggve, Das Laphrion, Der Tempelbezirk von Kalydon, 1948; and my Three Critical Periods of Greek Sculpture, 1951, 34 f., 43, and refs. there given.
17 Hauser, o.c., in 1889 was still able to say: ‘Alle jene Bildhauer nennen sich Athener.’
18 cf. Loewy, Inschriften, nos. 313 ff.; Toynbee, , Coll. Latomus, VI, 1951, 17 ff.Google Scholar; Richter, Three Critical Periods, 1951, 45 ff.; Squarciapino, ‘La scuola di Afrodisia,’ in Studie materiali del Museo dell'Impero Romano, 1943.
19 Loewy, Inschriften, nos. 340, 338, 339.
20 No. 2420. I owe the photographs and permission to publish them to the great kindness of Mr. C. Pietrangeli. Total height c. 69 cm.; diameter at top c. 59 cm.; height of figures c. 35–35·5 cm.
21 cf. Loewy, Inschriften, no. 342; Helbig, Führer 3, no. 1404; Aurigemma, Museo Nazionale, p. 77, no. 180. Kaibel, IGI, XIV, no. 1233, suggested ‘[Li]ndios’ for ‘[Athe]naios’, but there is no trace of a horizontal bar for a delta, and there would be just room, I think, for Athe on the missing portion of the drapery, especially if the initial alpha were placed on the edge as in the signature of Zenon on the drapery of the seated statue in the same Ludovisi Collection, inv. no. 1841 (Loewy, o.c., no. 365; Helbig, Führer 3, no. 1315). The omission of the horizontal bar in the lambda would be most unusual in this period, not so the omission of the little horizontal stroke of the alpha, so Professor Margherita Guarducci tells me.
22 Loewy, o.c., no. 341; Ruesch, Guida del Museo Nazionale di Napoli, no. 854.
23 Mansuelli, , Jd.I, LVI, 1941, 151 ff.Google Scholar, figs. 1–6; Richter, Three Critical Periods, fig. 97.
24 cf. Loewy, Inschriften, no. 344. Mansuelli, I.c., does not think that the artists of the Louvre and the Piacenza statues could have been the same man because the style is different in the two figures; but since both statues are undoubtedly copies, one of a fifth-century work, the other of a Hellenistic one, the question of style is not pertinent. On the other hand, Kleomenes was not an uncommon name.
25 Helbig, Führer 3, nos. 1350, 124.
26 cf. Löwy, Neuattische Kunst, 4; Becatti, Attikà, 16; and my Three Critical Periods, 48. I might mention here also the portraits of Periander and Bias (Schefold, Bildnisse, 152 f.), by some thought to be classicizing works of the first century B.C., by others, rightly in my opinion, faithful Roman copies of Greek fourth-century works (cf. Laurenzi, Ritratti greci, nos. 30, 47).
27 Richter, Catalogue of Engraved Gems, Metropolitan Museum, 1956, no. 332.
28 ibid., no. 337.
29 National Museum, Athens, no. 3335; Papaspiridi, Guide, pp. 95 f.
30 Richter, Cat., no. 300.
31 Richter, Ancient Italy, fig. 205.
32 Walters, Catalogue of Terracottas in the British Museum, no. D 525.
33 Benndorf, Griechische u. sizilische Vasenbilder, 118.
31 Thompson, H. A., ‘Two centuries of Hellenistic Pottery,’ Hesperia, III, 1934, 311–480CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schwabacher, , ‘Hellenistische Reliefkeramik im Kerameikos,’ AJA, XLV, 1941, 182–228CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edwards, , ‘Hellenistic Pottery from the Pnyx,’ Hesperia, Supplement x, 1956, 83–112Google Scholar.
35 cf. especially O. Vessberg, Studien zur Kunstgerchichte der römischen Republik, 1941, 26 ff., 59 ff.
36 cf. Villefosse, De, ‘Le Trésor de Boscoreale,’ Mon. Piot, v, 1899Google Scholar; Pernice and Winter, Der Hildesheimer Silberfund, 1901; E. Babelon, Trésor d'argenterie de Berthouville, 1916; Maiuri, La Casa del Menandroe il suo tesoro di argenteria, 1932; also Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers, 1954, 68 ff., and passim; Toynbee, o. c., 51 ff.; Richter, Ancient Italy, 56 ff.
37 Pernice and Winter, o.c., pl. III.
38 cf. De Villefosse, o.c., pls. XI–XIV.
39 Rubensohn, Hellenistisches Silbergerät in antiken Gipsabgüssen, 1911; Ippel, ‘Guss und Treibarbeit in Silber,’ Berliner Winckelmannsprogramm, 1937, 3 ff.
40 Hackin, Kurz, and others, Nouvelles recherches archéologiques à Begram, 1939–40 (Paris, 1954Google Scholar); Adriani, , Archeologia classica, VII, 1955, 43 ff.Google Scholar; Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers, 161 ff.
41 cf. my forthcoming article in the AJA of Oct., 1958.
42 e.g. Rubensohn, o.c.