Editing Sculpture (section)

=====Roman sculpture=====
{{main|Roman sculpture}}
[[File:26 colonna traiana da estt 05.jpg|thumb|Section of [[Trajan's Column]], CE 113, with scenes from the [[Trajan's Dacian Wars|Dacian Wars]]]]
[[File:Ara Pacis Relief Pax.jpg|thumb|[[Augustus|Augustan]] state Greco-Roman style on the {{Lang|la|[[Ara Pacis]]|italic=no}}, 13 BCE]]
Early Roman art was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighbouring [[Etruscan art|Etruscans]], themselves greatly influenced by their Greek trading partners. An Etruscan speciality was near life size tomb effigies in [[terracotta]], usually lying on top of a [[sarcophagus]] lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner in that period. As the expanding [[Roman Republic]] began to conquer Greek territory, at first in Southern Italy and then the entire Hellenistic world except for the [[Parthian Empire|Parthian]] far east, official and [[Roman patrician|patrician]] sculpture became largely an extension of the Hellenistic style, from which specifically Roman elements are hard to disentangle, especially as so much Greek sculpture survives only in copies of the Roman period.<ref>Strong, 58–63; Hennig, 66–69.</ref> By the 2nd century BCE, "most of the sculptors working at Rome" were Greek,<ref>Hennig, 24.</ref> often enslaved in conquests such as that of [[Corinth]] (146 BCE), and sculptors continued to be mostly Greeks, often slaves, whose names are very rarely recorded. Vast numbers of Greek statues were imported to Rome, whether as booty or the result of extortion or commerce, and temples were often decorated with re-used Greek works.<ref>Henig, 66–69; Strong, 36–39, 48; At the trial of [[Verres]], former governor of Sicily, [[Cicero]]'s prosecution details his depredations of art collections at great length.</ref>

A native Italian style can be seen in the tomb monuments, which very often featured portrait busts, of prosperous middle-class Romans, and [[Roman portraiture|portraiture]] is arguably the main strength of Roman sculpture. There are no survivals from the tradition of masks of ancestors that were worn in processions at the funerals of the great families and otherwise displayed in the home, but many of the busts that survive must represent ancestral figures, perhaps from the large family tombs like the [[Tomb of the Scipios]] or the later mausolea outside the city. The famous bronze head supposedly of [[Lucius Junius Brutus]] is very variously dated, but taken as a very rare survival of Italic style under the Republic, in the preferred medium of bronze.<ref>Henig, 23–24.</ref> Similarly stern and forceful heads are seen on coins of the Late Republic, and in the Imperial period coins as well as busts sent around the Empire to be placed in the [[basilica]]s of provincial cities were the main visual form of imperial propaganda; even [[Londinium]] had a near-colossal statue of [[Nero]], though far smaller than the 30-metre-high [[Colossus of Nero]] in Rome, now lost.<ref>Henig, 66–71.</ref>

The Romans did not generally attempt to compete with free-standing Greek works of heroic exploits from history or mythology, but from early on produced historical works in relief, culminating in the great [[Roman triumphal column]]s with continuous narrative reliefs winding around them, of which those commemorating [[Trajan's Column|Trajan]] (CE 113) and [[Column of Marcus Aurelius|Marcus Aurelius]] (by 193) survive in Rome, where the {{Lang|la|[[Ara Pacis]]|italic=no}} ("Altar of Peace", 13 BCE) represents the official Greco-Roman style at its most classical and refined. Among other major examples are the earlier re-used reliefs on the [[Arch of Constantine]] and the base of the [[Column of Antoninus Pius]] (161),<ref>Henig, 73–82; Strong, 48–52, 80–83, 108–17, 128–32, 141–59, 177–82, 197–211.</ref> [[Campana relief]]s were cheaper pottery versions of marble reliefs and the taste for relief was from the imperial period expanded to the sarcophagus. All forms of luxury small sculpture continued to be patronized, and quality could be extremely high, as in the silver [[Warren Cup]], glass [[Lycurgus Cup]], and large cameos like the [[Gemma Augustea]], [[Gonzaga Cameo]] and the "[[Great Cameo of France]]".<ref>Henig, Chapter 6; Strong, 303–15.</ref>  For a much wider section of the population, moulded relief decoration of [[Ancient Roman pottery|pottery vessels]] and small figurines were produced in great quantity and often considerable quality.<ref>Henig, Chapter 8.</ref>

After moving through a late 2nd-century "baroque" phase,<ref>Strong, 171–76, 211–14.</ref> in the 3rd century, Roman art largely abandoned, or simply became unable to produce, sculpture in the classical tradition, a change whose causes remain much discussed. Even the most important imperial monuments now showed stumpy, large-eyed figures in a harsh frontal style, in simple compositions emphasizing power at the expense of grace. The contrast is famously illustrated in the [[Arch of Constantine]] of 315 in Rome, which combines sections in the new style with [[roundel]]s in the earlier full Greco-Roman style taken from elsewhere, and the ''[[Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs|Four Tetrarchs]]'' ({{Circa|305}}) from the new capital of [[Constantinople]], now in Venice. [[Ernst Kitzinger]] found in both monuments the same "stubby proportions, angular movements, an ordering of parts through symmetry and repetition and a rendering of features and drapery folds through incisions rather than modelling... The hallmark of the style wherever it appears consists of an emphatic hardness, heaviness and angularity—in short, an almost complete rejection of the classical tradition".<ref>Kitzinger, 9 (both quotes), more generally his Ch 1; Strong, 250–57, 264–66, 272–80.</ref>

This revolution in style shortly preceded the period in which [[Christianity]] was adopted by the Roman state and the great majority of the people, leading to the end of large religious sculpture, with large statues now only used for emperors. However, rich Christians continued to commission reliefs for sarcophagi, as in the [[Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus]], and very small sculpture, especially in ivory, was continued by Christians, building on the style of the [[consular diptych]].<ref>Strong, 287–91, 305–08, 315–18; Henig, 234–40.</ref>

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File:Museo archeologico di Firenze, coperchio di sepolcro muliebre da Tuscania, terracotta con tracce di policromia III sec. d.c.JPG|[[Etruscan art|Etruscan]] [[sarcophagus]], 3rd century BCE
File:Capitoline Brutus Musei Capitolini MC1183 02.jpg|The "[[Capitoline Brutus]]", dated to the 3rd or 1st century BCE
File:Statue-Augustus.jpg|''[[Augustus of Prima Porta]]'', statue of the emperor [[Augustus]], 1st century CE. [[Vatican Museums]]
File:Tomba dei decii, dalla via ostiense, 98-117 dc..JPG|Tomb relief of the Decii, 98–117 CE
File:Claudius Pio-Clementino Inv243.jpg|Bust of [[Emperor Claudius]], {{Circa|50 CE}}, (reworked from a bust of emperor [[Caligula]]), It was found in the so-called Otricoli basilica in [[Lanuvium]], Italy, [[Vatican Museums]]
File:COMMODE HERCULE.jpg|[[Commodus]] dressed as [[Hercules]], {{Circa|191 CE}}, in the late imperial "baroque" style
File:Venice – The Tetrarchs 03.jpg|''[[Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs|The Four Tetrarchs]]'', {{Circa|305}}, showing the new anti-classical style, in [[Porphyry (geology)|porphyry]], now [[San Marco, Venice]]
File:Great Cameo of France CdM Paris Bab264 white background.jpg|The [[hardstone carving|cameo gem]] known as the "[[Great Cameo of France]]", {{Circa|23 CE}}, with an [[allegory]] of [[Augustus]] and his family
</gallery>