In Works of Art From the Late Empire Official Portraits Are Marked by

Roman Fine art
Architecture, Sculpture, Painting of Aboriginal Rome.
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Alcantara Bridge, Kingdom of spain (104-half-dozen CE)
Roman stone curvation bridge over the
Tagus River.

Trajan's Column (106-113)
Showing pedestal, shaft, capital
and statue of St Peter on meridian.

Roman Art (c.500 BCE - 500 CE)
Origins, History, Types, Characteristics

Contents

• Introduction
• History of Roman Art
• Origins
• Cultural Inferiority Complex
• Realist Propaganda
• Types of Roman Art
• Compages
• Famous Roman Buildings
- Circus Maximus - Colosseum - Arch of Titus - Baths of Trajan - Pantheon
- Baths of Caracalla - Baths of Diocletian - Basilica of Maxentius
• Sculpture: Types and Characteristics
• Historical Reliefs
• Trajan's Column
• Marcus Aurelius' Column
• Portrait Busts and Statues
• Famous Portraits of Roman Emperors
• Religious and Funerary Sculpture
• Copies of Ancient Greek Sculpture
• Painting
• Panel Paintings
• Triumphal Paintings
• Murals
• Art Styles From the Roman Empire
• Belatedly Roman Fine art (c.350-500)
• Further Resources

Note: For later artists and styles inspired past the arts of aboriginal Rome, come across: Classicism in Fine art (800 onwards).

The Severan Tondo: panel painting
of the Regal Family unit (c.200 CE)

Marcus Aurelius' Column (193 CE)
Erected in the Piazza Colonna, Rome.
Depicts the "rain miracle of Quadi".
God rescues the Roman Legion from
destruction by barberians past
creating a terrible tempest.

Introduction

For several centuries Ancient Rome was the most powerful nation on globe, excelling all others at military arrangement and warfare, engineering, and architecture. Its unique cultural achievements include the invention of the dome and the groin vault, the development of concrete and a European-wide network of roads and bridges. Despite this, Roman sculptors and painters produced only a limited amount of outstanding original fine art, preferring instead to recycle designs from Greek art, which they revered as far superior to their own. Indeed, many types of art practised by the Romans - including, sculpture (bronze and marble bronze, sarcophagi), fine art painting (murals, portraiture, vase-painting), and decorative art (including metalwork, mosaics, jewellery, ivory etching) had already been fully mastered by Ancient Greek artists. Not surprisingly, therefore, while numerous Greek sculptors (like Phidias, Kresilas, Myron, Polykleitos, Callimachus, Skopas, Lysippos, Praxiteles, and Leochares, Phyromachos) and painters (like Apollodorus, Zeuxis of Heraclea, Agatharchos, Parrhasius, Apelles of Kos, Antiphilus, Euphranor of Corinth) were accorded peachy respect throughout the Hellenistic earth, near Roman artists were regarded as no more than skilled tradesmen and have remained anonymous.

Of class information technology is incorrect to say that Roman art was devoid of innovation: its urban architecture was ground-breaking, as was its landscape painting and portrait busts. Nor is information technology true that Roman artists produced no bang-up masterpieces - witness the extraordinary relief sculpture on monuments like Ara Pacis Augustae and Trajan's Column. Just on the whole, we can say that Roman art was predominantly derivative and, in a higher place all, utilitarian. Information technology served a purpose, a college skilful: the dissemination of Roman values along with a respect for Roman power. As it transpired, classical Roman art has been immensely influential on many subsequent cultures, through revivalist movements like Neoclassical architecture, which take shaped much European and American architecture, as exemplified by the U.s.a. Capitol Building The lesser-known Classical Revival in modernistic art (1900-thirty) led to a return to figure painting besides as new abstract movements similar Cubism.

History of Roman Art

Origins

Although Rome was founded as far back as 750 BCE, it led a precarious existence for several centuries. Initially, it was ruled past Etruscan kings who deputed a variety of Etruscan art (murals, sculptures and metalwork) for their tombs likewise as their palaces, and to celebrate their military victories. After the founding of the Roman Republic in 500 BCE, Etruscan influence waned and, from 300 BCE, as the Romans started coming into contact with the flourishing Greek cities of southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, they fell nether the influence of Greek fine art - a process known as Hellenization. Presently many Greek works of fine art were beingness taken to Rome equally booty, and many Greek artists followed to pursue their careers nether Roman patronage.

Nevertheless, the arts were yet non a priority for Roman leaders who were more concerned about survival and military affairs. Information technology wasn't until about 200 BCE after it won the offset Punic War against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, that Rome felt secure enough to develop its culture. Even so, the absence of an contained cultural tradition of its ain meant that well-nigh ancient fine art of Rome imitated Greek works. Rome was unique among the powers of the ancient earth in developing only a limited creative language of its ain.

Cultural Inferiority Complex

Roman compages and engineering was never less than bold, merely its painting and sculpture was based on Greek traditions and likewise on fine art forms adult in its vassal states like Egypt and Ancient Persia. To put it some other way, despite their spectacular military triumphs, the Romans had an inferiority circuitous in the face of Greek artistic achievement. Their ultra-pragmatic response was to recycle Greek sculpture at every opportunity. Greek poses, reworked with Roman clothes and accessories, were pressed into service to reinforce Roman power. Heroic Greek statues were even supplied headless, to enable the buyer to fit his own portrait head.

An case is the equestrian bronze statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (c.175 CE), whose stance is reworked from the Greek statue "Doryphorus" (440 BCE). Come across: Greek Sculpture Made Simple.

The reason for Rome's cultural inferiority circuitous remains unclear. Some Classical scholars accept pointed to the pragmatic Roman temperament; others, to the overriding Roman need for territorial security against the waves of marauding tribes from eastern and cardinal Europe and the consistent low priority accorded to art and culture. To which we might add that - judging by the narrowness of Celtic art (c.500 BCE - 100 CE) - Roman artists weren't doing besides desperately. Moreover, we should note that cities in Ancient Rome were less provincial and far more powerful than Greek metropolis-states, so that its art invariably played a more functional role - non least because Roman culture was really a melange of dissimilar behavior and customs, all of which had to be accomodated. Thus, for example, art chop-chop became something of a status symbol: something to enhance the buyer's dwelling and social position. And since virtually Romans recognized the intrinsic value of Greek artistry, buyers wanted Greek-style works.

Realist Propaganda

Similar the Romans themselves, early Roman art (c.510 BCE to 27 BCE) tended to exist realistic and direct. Portraits, both ii-dimensional and three-dimensional, were typically detailed and unidealized, although afterwards during the age of Hellenistic-Roman fine art (c.27 BCE - 200 CE), the Romans became enlightened of the propaganda value of busts and statuary, and sought to convey political messages through poses and accessories. The same PR value was accorded to relief sculpture (see, for case, the Cavalcade of Marcus Aurelius), and to history painting (see, Triumphal Paintings, below). Thus when commemorating a battle, for instance, the artwork used would be executed in a realistic - almost "documentary" style. This realistic down-to-world Roman way is in vivid contrast to Hellenistic art which illustrated military achievements with mythological imagery. Paradoxically, one reason for the ultimate autumn of Rome was considering information technology became too attached to the propagandist value of its fine art, and squandered huge resources on grandiose building projects purely to print the people. Structure of the Baths of Diocletian (298-306), for instance, monopolised the unabridged brick manufacture of Rome, for several years.

Types of Roman Art

Compages

Rome'southward greatest contribution to the history of art is undoubtedly to be found in the field of architectural blueprint. Roman architecture during the historic period of the Republic (cognition of which derives largely from the 1st-century Roman builder Vitruvius) discovered the round temple and the curved arch but, after the turn of the Millennium, Roman architects and engineers developed techniques for urban building on a massive scale. The erection of monumental structures like the Pantheon and the Colosseum, would have been impossible without Rome's development of the arch and the dome, every bit well as its mastery of strong and low-cost materials like concrete and bricks.

For a comparison with building design in Ancient Arab republic of egypt, please see: Egyptian Architecture (c.3000 BCE - 160 CE). In particular, delight run across: Late Egyptian Architecture (1069 BCE - 200 CE).

The Romans didn't invent the arch - it was known but not much used in Greek architecture - but they were the first to master the use of multiple arches, or vaults. From this, they invented the Roman groin vault - two barrel vaults gear up at right-angles - which represented a revolutionary comeback on the one-time Greek post-and-lintel method, as it enabled architects to back up far heavier loads and to span much wider openings. The Romans also made frequent utilise of the semicircular curvation, typically without resorting to mortar: relying instead on the precision of their stonework.

Arches and vaults played a critical function in the erection of buildings similar the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla, the Basilica of Maxentius and the Colosseum. The arch was also an essential component in the building of bridges, exemplified by the Pont du Gard and the bridge at Merida, and aqueducts, exemplified by the ane at Segovia, and as well the Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus in Rome itself.

A further architectural development was the dome (vaulted ceiling), which made possible the construction and roofing of large open up areas within buildings, like Hadrian's Pantheon, the Basilica of Constantine, as well as numerous other temples and basilicas, since far fewer columns were needed to support the weight of the domed roof. The use of domes went hand in hand with the all-encompassing apply of concrete - a combination sometimes referred to as the "Roman Architectural Revolution". But flagship buildings with domes were far from being the simply architectural masterpieces congenital by Ancient Rome. But as important was the five-storey apartment building known as an insula, which accomodated thousands of citizens.

It was during the age of Emperor Trajan (98-117 CE) and Emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) that Rome reached the zenith of its architectural glory, attained through numerous building programs of monuments, baths, aqueducts, palaces, temples and mausoleums. Many of the buildings from this era and later, served as models for architects of the Italian Renaissance, such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) designer of the iconic dome of the cathedral in Florence, and both Donato Bramante (1444-1514) and Michelangelo (1475-1564), designers of St Peter'south Basilica. The time of Constantine (306-337 CE) witnessed the final great edifice programs in the metropolis of Rome, including the completion of the Baths of Diocletian and the erection of the Basilica of Maxentius and the Arch of Constantine.

Famous Roman Buildings

Circus Maximus (6th century BCE - 4th century CE)

Dating dorsum to Etruscan times, and located in the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills, this was the main Roman chariot racing venue in Rome, Italy. Measuring roughly 2,000 feet in length (610 metres) and 400 feet in width (120 metres), it was rebuilt in the age of Julius Caesar to seat an estimated 150,000 spectators, and again during the reign of Constantine to seat nigh 250,000. It is now a park.

Colosseum (72-fourscore CE)

Congenital in the centre of Rome past Vespasian to appease the masses, this elliptical amphitheatre was named after a colossal statue of Nero that stood nearby. Built to seat some 50,000 spectators, its intricate design, along with its model system of tiered seating and spacious passageways, makes it one of the greatest works of Roman compages. The Colosseum was one of the key sights on the Grand Tour of the 18th century.

The Arch of Titus (c.81 CE)

The oldest surviving Roman triumphal arch, it was built after the young Emperor'southward death to celebrate his suppression of the Jewish insurgence in Judea, in 70 CE. Standing on the Via Sacra, due south-e of the Roman Forum, the Arch of Titus was the model for Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe in Paris (1806-36).

Baths of Trajan (104-nine CE)

A huge bathing and leisure circuitous on the s side of the Oppian Hill, designed by Apollodorus of Damascus, it continued to be used up until the early fifth century, or possibly later, until the destruction of the Roman aqueducts compelled its abandonment.

Pantheon (c.125 CE)

Built by Marcus Agrippa as a temple dedicated to the seven gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt by Hadrian in 126 CE, the Pantheon is a daring early instance of concrete structure. The interior infinite is based on a perfect sphere, and its coffered ceiling remains the largest non-reinforced physical dome in the world. In the eye of its dome an oculus lets in a beam of lite.

Baths of Caracalla (212-16 CE)

Capable of holding up to 16,000 people, the building was roofed by a series of groin vaults and included shops, two gymnasiums (palaestras) and ii public libraries. The baths proper consisted of a central 185 x fourscore anxiety cold room (frigidarium) a room of medium temperature (tepidarium) with two pools, and a 115-pes bore hot room (caldarium), as well as two palaestras. The entire construction was built on a 20-pes high base containing storage areas and furnaces. The baths were supplied with water from the Marcian Aqueduct.

Baths of Diocletian (298-306)

These baths (thermae) were probably the nearly grandiose of all Rome's public baths. Standing on loftier basis on the northeast role of the Viminal, the smallest of the Vii hills of Rome, the baths occupied an area well in excess of 1 one thousand thousand square feet and was supposedly capable of belongings up to 3,000 people at ane time. The complex used water supplied by the Aqua Marcia and Aqua Antoniniana aqueducts.

Basilica of Maxentius (308-12 CE)

The largest building in the Roman Forum, information technology featured a total complement of arches and barrel vaults and a folded roof. It had a key nave overlooked by three groin vaults suspended 120 feet higher up the flooring on four piers. There was a massive open infinite in the key nave, simply dissimilar other basilicas it didn't need the usual complement of columns to support the ceiling, because the entire building was supported on arches. Moreover, its folded roof reduced the total weight of the structure thus minimizing the horizontal forcefulness on the outer arches.

Sculpture: Types and Characteristics

Roman sculpture may be divided into 4 master categories: historical reliefs; portrait busts and statues, including equestrian statues; funerary reliefs, sarcophagi or tomb sculpture; and copies of ancient Greek works. Like architecture, a proficient bargain of Roman sculpture was created to serve a purpose: namely, to impress the public - exist they Roman citizens or 'barbarians' - and communicate the power and majesty of Rome. In its important works, at least, in that location was a constant expression of seriousness, with none of the Greek conceptualism or introspection. The mood, pose and facial features of the Roman statue of an Emperor, for instance, was typically solemn and unsmiling. Every bit Rome grew more confident from the reign of Augustus (31 BCE - 14 CE), its leaders might appear in more magnanimous poses, but gravitas and an underlying sense of Roman greatness was never far from the surface. Another important characteristic of Rome'due south plastic art was its realism. The highly detailed reliefs on Trajan'southward Column and the Column of Marcus Aurelius, for case, are perfect illustrations of this focus on authentic representation, and have been important sources of data for scholars on many aspects of the Roman Legion, its equipment and battle tactics.

Nonetheless, as nosotros have seen, Roman sculptors borrowed heavily from the sculpture of Aboriginal Hellenic republic, and - aside from the sheer numbers of portrait busts, and the quality of its historical reliefs - Roman sculpture was dominated past High Classical Greek sculpture also as by Hellenistic Greek sculpture. What's more, with the expansion of Rome's empire and the huge rise in need for statuary, sculptors churned out countless copies of Greek statues.

For the effect of Roman sculpture on later on styles of plastic fine art, delight encounter: Neoclassical Sculpture (1750-1850).

Historical Reliefs

Rome didn't invent relief sculpture - Stone Historic period human did. Nor was there any particular genius in the skill of its carvers and stone masons: both the reliefs of the Parthenon (447-422 BCE) and the frieze of the Pergamon Altar of Zeus (c.166-154 BCE) outshone anything created in Italy. See also: Pergamene School of Hellenistic Sculpture (241-133 BCE). What Rome did was to inject the genre with a new set of aesthetics, a new purpose: namely, to make history. Afterward all, if an event or campaign is "carved in rock", it must be truthful, right? The Greeks adopted the more "cultured" approach of recording their history more obliquely, using scenes from mythology. The Romans were far more than downwardly to earth: they sculpted their history as information technology happened, warts and all.

Trajan'south Column (106-113 CE)

The greatest relief sculpture of Ancient Rome, Trajan's Column is a 125-pes Doric-style monument, designed by the builder Apollodorus of Damascus. It has a spiral frieze that winds 23 times around its shaft, commemorating the Dacian triumphs of Emperor Trajan (98-117 CE). Sculpted in the cool, balanced style of the 2nd century, its composition and extraordinarily meticulous detail makes it one of the finest reliefs in the history of sculpture. A total-size cast of Trajan's Column is on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the National History Museum of Romania, Bucharest.

Marcus Aurelius' Column (c.180-193 CE)

2d only to Trajan'due south monument, this 100-foot Doric column in the Piazza Colonna too features a winding ribbon of marble sculpture carved in low relief, which illustrates the story of the Emperor'due south Danubian or Marcomannic wars, waged by him during the period 166-180 CE. It includes the controversial "rain phenomenon", in which a colossal thunderstorm saves the Roman army from death at the hands of the barbarian Quadi tribes. The sculptural fashion of the column differs significantly from that of Trajan's Column, every bit it introduces the more expressive fashion of the tertiary century, seen besides in the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus (199-203 CE) by the human foot of the Capitoline Hill. The heads of the Marcus Aurelius figures are larger than normal, to bear witness off their facial expressions. A higher relief is used, permitting greater contrast betwixt light and shadow. Overall, much more dramatic - a style which conspicuously reflected the uncertain country of the Roman Empire.

Other famous relief works of rock sculpture carved by Roman artists include: the processional marble frieze on the Ara Pacis Augustae (thirteen-9 BCE) in the Campus Martius, and the architectural relief sculpture on the Curvation of Titus (c.85-ninety CE) and the Arch of Constantine (312-15 CE).

Portrait Busts and Statues

These works of marble and (occasionally) bronze sculpture were another of import Roman contribution to the art of Artifact. Effigies of Roman leaders had been displayed in public places for centuries, but with the onset of Empire in the late 1st-century BCE, marble portrait busts and statues of the Emperor - which were copied en masse and sent to all parts of the Roman globe - served an of import function in reminding people of Rome's reach. They also served an important unifying force. Roman administrators had them placed or erected in squares or public buildings throughout the empire, and flush citizens bought them for their reception rooms and gardens to demonstrate loyalty. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust was probably borrowed from Etruscan art, since Greek busts were usually made without shoulders.

Roman statues and portrait busts are in many of the best fine art museums around the world, notably the Louvre (Paris), the Vatican Museums (Rome), the British Museum (London), the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art (New York) the Getty Museum (Los Angeles).

Famous Portraits of Roman Emperors

Famous busts and statues of Roman leaders include:

- Statue of Augustus (Ruled 27-14 CE) (Livia'south Villa, Prima Porta)
- Statue of Tiberius in Quondam Age (14-37) (Capitoline Museum)
- Bosom of Caligula (37-41) (Louvre)
- Statue of Claudius as the God Jupiter (41-54) (Vatican Museum)
- Head of Nero (54-68) (British Museum)
- Bust of Galba (68-69) (Capitoline Museum)
- Statue of Titus (79-81) (Vatican Museum)
- Bust of Trajan (98-117) (British Museum)
- Bronze Statue of Hadrian (117-138) (Israel Museum)
- Statuary Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius (180) (Piazza del Campidoglio)
- Statue of Commodus as Hercules (180-192) (Capitoline Museum)
- Bust of Gordian 2 (238) (Capitoline Museum)
- Bust of Pupienus (238) (Capitoline Museum)
- Bust of Balbinus (238) (Capitoline Museum)
- Bust of Maxentius (306-312) (Museo Torlonia)
- Colossal Head of Constantine (307-337) (Basilica Nova)

Religious and Funerary Sculpture

Religious fine art was too a popular if less unique grade of Roman sculpture. An important feature of a Roman temple was the statue of the deity to whom it was defended. Such statues were also erected in public parks and private gardens. Small devotional statuettes of varying quality were as well popular for personal and family shrines. These smaller works, when commissioned for the wealthier upper classes, might involve ivory carving and chyselephantine works, wood-carving, and terracotta sculpture, sometimes glazed for colour.

As Rome turned from cremation to burial at the end of the 1st century CE, stone coffins, known as sarcophagi, were much in demand: the iii most mutual types being Metropolitan Roman (made in Rome), Attic-style (made in Athens) and Asiatic (fabricated in Dokimeion, Phrygia). All were carved and usually decorated with sculpture - in this case reliefs. The most expensive sarcophagi were carved from marble, though other rock was besides used, as was wood and even pb. In improver to a range of unlike depictions of the deceased - such as Etruscan-fashion total-length sculptural portraits of the person reclining on a sofa - popular motifs used past sculptors included episodes from Roman (or Greek) mythology, as well as genre and hunting scenes, and garlands of fruit and leaves. Towards the stop of the Roman Empire, sarcophagi became an important medium for Christian-Roman Fine art (313 onwards).

Copies of Aboriginal Greek Sculpture

Although the wholesale replication of Greek statues indicated a hesitancy and lack of creativity on the role of Roman artists, the history of art could not be more grateful to them, for their efforts. Indeed, information technology is off-white to say that one of the greatest contributions of Rome to the history of art, lies in its replication of original Greek statues, 99 percent of which have disappeared. Without Roman copies of the originals, Greek art would never have received the appreciation it deserves, and Renaissance art (and thus Western Art in general) might have taken a very different course.

Painting

The greatest innovation of Roman painters was the development of landscape painting, a genre in which the Greeks showed fiddling interest. Also noteworthy was their development of a very crude course of linear perspective. In their effort to satisfy the huge demand for paintings throughout the empire, from officials, senior army officers, householders and the general public, Roman artists produced console paintings (in encaustic and tempera), large and small murals (in fresco), and mastered all the painting genres, including their own make of "triumphal" history painting. Most surviving Roman paintings are from Pompeii and Herculanum, as the erruption of Vesuvius in 79 helped to preserve them. Nigh of them are decorative murals, featuring seascapes and landscapes, and were painted by skilled 'interior decorators' rather than virtuoso artists - a inkling to the function of fine art in Roman society.

Panel Paintings

In Rome, every bit in Hellenic republic, the highest form of painting was panel painting. Executed using the encaustic or tempera methods, panel paintings were mass-produced in their thousands for brandish in offices and public buildings throughout the empire. Unfortunately, almost all painted panels accept been lost. The all-time surviving example from the art of Classical Antiquity is probably the "Severan Tondo" (c.200 CE, Antikensammlung Berlin), a portrait of Roman Emperor Septimus Severus with his family, painted in tempera on a circular wood panel. The best instance from the Roman Empire is the astonishing serial of Fayum Mummy portraits painted in Arab republic of egypt during the period 50 BCE to 250 CE.

Triumphal Paintings

Roman artists were also frequently commissioned to produce pictures highlighting military successes - a grade known as Triumphal Painting. This type of history painting - usually executed as a mural painting in fresco - would describe the battle or campaign in meticulous detail, and might incorporate mixed-media adornments and map designs to inform and impress the public. Since they were quick to produce, many of these triumphal works would take influenced the composition of historical reliefs similar the Column of Marcus Aurelius.

Murals

Roman murals - executed either "al fresco" with pigment being applied to moisture plaster, or "al secco" using paint on dry out walls - are usually classified into 4 periods, equally set out by the German archaeologist August Mau following his excavations at Pompeii.

• The First Style (c.200-fourscore BCE)
Also known as incrustation or masonry mode, it derived from Hellenistic palaces in the Heart East. Useing vivid colours it simulates the advent of marble.
• The Second Style (c.80 BCE - 100 CE)
This aimed to create the illusion of extra space by painting pictures with pregnant depth, such every bit views overlooking a garden or other mural. In time, the style developed to cover the entire wall, creating the impression that i was looking out of a room onto a existent scene.
• The Third Manner (c.100-200)
This was more ornamental with less illusion of depth. The wall was divided into precise zones, using pictures of columns or foliage. Scenes painted in the zones were typically either exotic representations of real or imaginery animals, or merely monochromatic linear drawings.
• The Fourth Style (c.200-400)
This was a mixture of the previous ii styles. Depth returned to the landscape but it was executed more than decoratively, with greater use of ornamentation. For example, the creative person might paint several windows which, instead of looking out onto a landscape or cityscape, showed scenes from Greek myths or other fantasy scenes, including however lifes.

Art Styles From the Roman Empire

The Roman Empire incorporated a host of different nationalities, religious groups and associated styles of art. Master among them, in addition to earlier Etruscan art of the Italian mainland, were forms of Celtic culture - namely the Iron Age La Tene manner (c.450-l BCE) - which was accomodated within the Empire in an idiom known as Roman-Celtic art, and the hieratic way of Egyptian art, which was absorbed into the Hellenistic-Roman idiom.

Tardily Roman Art (c.350-500)

During the Christian epoch, the division of the Roman Empire into a weak Western Roman Empire (based in Ravenna and Rome) and a stiff Eastern Roman Empire (based in Constantinople), led to changes in Belatedly Roman fine art. While wall painting, mosaic art, and funerary sculpture thrived, life-size statues and panel painting dwindled. In Constantinople, Roman fine art absorbed Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine art of the belatedly empire, and well before Rome was overrun past Visigoths under Alaric (410) and sacked by Vandals under Gaiseric, Roman artists, master-craftsmen and artisans moved to the Eastern majuscule to continue their merchandise. (See Christian-Byzantine Art.) The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, for instance, one of the most famous examples of Roman dome architecture, provided employment for some 10,000 of these specialists and other workmen. Commissioned by Emperor Justinian (527-565), the Hagia Sophia, together with the shimmering mosaics of Ravenna, represented the terminal gasp of Roman fine art.

Further Resource

To find out more almost painting and sculpture from Classical Antiquity, see the post-obit resources:

- Classical Greek Painting (c.480-323 BCE)
- Hellenistic Greek Painting (c.323-27 BCE)
- Early Classical Greek Sculpture (c.480-450 BCE)
- Late Classical Greek Sculpture (c.400-323 BCE)
- Greek Pottery

• For more than about painting and sculpture in Aboriginal Rome, see: Homepage.

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