Roman Art
古代ローマ美術 / c. 509 BCE–476 CE / Style / Historical Styles
Roman art absorbed Greek, Etruscan and provincial forms while joining individualized portraiture, continuous historical relief, architecture and wall painting to ancestry, civic life and imperial power.
At a glance
Visual cues
- Veristic portrait heads recording age and individual difference
- Historical relief unfolding events in continuous scenes
- Public architecture repeating arches, vaults and domes
- Wall painting and mosaic opening rooms into fictive architecture and gardens
Best used for
- Joining civic narrative, lineage and government through portraits, buildings and sequential scenes
- Adding individual faces, urban space and engineered mass to a classical reference
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Dictionary entry
- Type
- Use Roman-capital proportions for inscriptions and assign longer reading to a modern legible text face.
- Composition
- Set portraits and narrative scenes in an axial architectural frame, moving time through continuous horizontal bands.
- Material
- Separate the uses of marble, bronze, red-brown plaster and stone or glass mosaic, preserving differences in aging.
- Caution
- Copies of Greek statues and gladiator props are not enough. Look for individual portraiture, civic narrative and organized architectural space.
- Further study
- Roman imperial and provincial art / Veristic portraiture and historical relief / Pompeian wall painting, arches and vaults
Related entries
- Classical Greek Art (古典期ギリシャ美術)Same Historical Styles lineage.Compare Roman Art and Classical Greek Art
- Byzantine Art (ビザンティン美術)Same Historical Styles lineage.Compare Roman Art and Byzantine Art
More from Historical Styles
Continue through styles in the same Historical Styles family, prioritised by shared effects.
- Palladianism (パッラーディオ主義)Shared effects: Trust / Luxury.
- Baroque (バロック)Shared effects: Luxury / Trust.
- Beaux-Arts (ボザール様式)Shared effects: Trust / Luxury.
Browse all Historical Styles entries
Cite this entry
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- https://indexstyle.org/styles/roman-art
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