Roman Art

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Column of Marcus Aurelius

With the third century AD (around 200 AD) several new ideas come into Roman art.

First, the wars with the Germans in the north were accompanied by a new taste for bloodshed in art, so that monuments produced in the 200s AD, like the column of Marcus Aurelius, often show people having their heads cut off or their guts ripped out, or suffering in some other way. You can also see this on the Arch of Septimius Severus.

Column of Marcus Aurelius

Second, there was an increasing use of the drill rather than the chisel to make sculpting easier and faster, giving a somewhat different look.

Third, there was at the same time a new concern for the soul, maybe because there were more and more Christians in the Roman Empire. In art, this shows up as a lot of emphasis on the eyes (the windows to the soul), often with the eyes looking upward to heaven, or toward the gods. At the same time, because the body is less important, the sculptors take less care to show the body accurately. Sometimes the arms and legs are too short, and the head tends to be too big.

In the fourth century (the 300s) AD, there is less blood and gore, but the interest in the soul and the tendency to show that by big eyes and abstract, unreal bodies continues right up to the fall of Rome. This piece (from the Louvre) shows the goddess Venus rising out of the ocean.