Editing Roman art (section)

==Painting==
{{Main|Painting in ancient Rome}}
{{further|Pompeian Styles}}
[[File:Wall painting - female painter - Pompeii (VI 1 10) - Napoli MAN 9018.jpg|thumb|left|Female painter sitting on a campstool and painting a statue of [[Dionysus]] or [[Priapus]] onto a panel which is held by a boy. Fresco from [[Pompeii]], 1st century]]

Of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. 

The best known and most important pocket is the wall paintings from [[Pompeii]], [[Herculaneum]] and other sites nearby, which show how residents of a wealthy seaside resort decorated their walls in the century or so before the fatal eruption of [[Mount Vesuvius]] in AD 79. A [[Pompeian Styles|succession of dated styles]] have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with [[August Mau]], showing increasing elaboration.

Wall paintings of the same period have also been found from the remains of prominent aristocratic homes in Rome itself. Much of [[Nero]]'s palace in Rome, the [[Domus Aurea]], built in the 60s AD, survived as grottos; their paintings inspired the [[grotesque]] style of painting popular during the Renaissance. We also have murals from houses identified with the emperor [[House of Augustus|Augustus]] and his wife [[Villa of Livia|Livia]], dating to beginning of the [[first century AD]]. The [[Casa della Farnesina]] is another prominent survival of the early Empire that gave up many paintings.

Outside of Italy, many fragments of painted walls have been found throughout the Empire, but few complete pieces. In the Western provinces of the Empire most fragments date from after the year 200 AD.

From [[Roman Egypt]] there are a large number of what are known as [[Fayum mummy portraits]], bust portraits on wood added to the outside of [[mummy|mummies]] by a Romanized middle class; despite their very distinct local character they are probably broadly representative of Roman style in painted portraits, which are otherwise entirely lost.

[[File:Affresco romano - eracle ed onfale - area vesuviana.JPG|thumb|[[Heracles]] and [[Omphale]], Roman fresco [[Pompeian Styles|Pompeian Fourth Style]] (45-79&nbsp;AD), [[Naples National Archaeological Museum]], Italy]]
Starting in the 3rd century AD and finishing by about 400 we have a large body of paintings from the [[Catacombs of Rome]], by no means all Christian, showing the later continuation of the domestic decorative tradition in a version adapted - probably not greatly adapted - for use in burial chambers, in what was probably a rather humbler social milieu than the largest houses in Pompeii.  

[[File:Dame-Schmuckkasten-Trier.jpg|220x124px|thumb|right|A [[4th Century]] portrait found in [[Trier]], [[Germany]], which may depict [[Flavia Julia Constantia|Constantia]], half-sister to the emperor [[Constantine the Great|Constantine]].]]

Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, or of the painting on wood done in Italy during that period.<ref name="Piper, p. 252"/> In sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history,<ref name="Janson, p. 190">Janson, p. 190</ref> and of provincial and decorative paintings.

Most of this wall painting was done using the ''[[a secco]]'' (dry) method, but some [[fresco]] paintings also existed in Roman times.  There is [[Roman mosaic|evidence from mosaics]] and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works.<ref name="Janson, p. 190"/> However, adding to the confusion is the fact that inscriptions may be recording the names of immigrant Greek artists from Roman times, not from Ancient Greek originals that were copied.<ref name="Piper, p. 253"/>  The Romans entirely lacked a tradition of figurative [[Greek vase painting|vase-painting]] comparable to that of the Ancient Greeks, which the Etruscans had emulated.

===Variety of subjects===
[[File:Zeffiro-e-clori---pompeii.jpg|thumb|left|''The Wedding of [[Zephyrus]] and [[Chloris]]'' (54–68 AD, [[Pompeian Styles|Pompeian Fourth Style]]) within painted architectural panels from the Casa del Naviglio]]
Roman painting provides a wide variety of themes: animals, still life, scenes from everyday life, portraits, and some mythological subjects. During the Hellenistic period, it evoked the pleasures of the countryside and represented scenes of shepherds, herds, rustic temples, rural mountainous landscapes and country houses.<ref name="Piper, p. 253"/> Erotic scenes are also relatively common. In the late empire, after 200AD, early Christian themes mixed with pagan imagery survive on catacomb walls.<ref name="Piper, p. 260">Piper, p. 260</ref>

===Landscape and vistas===
[[File:Pompejanischer Maler um 10 20 001.jpg|thumb|[[Villa of Agrippa Postumus]], [[Boscotrecase]], Third style]]
The main innovation of Roman painting compared to Greek art was the development of landscapes, in particular incorporating techniques of perspective, though true mathematical perspective developed 1,500 years later. Surface textures, shading, and coloration are well applied but scale and spatial depth was still not rendered accurately. Some landscapes were pure scenes of nature, particularly gardens with flowers and trees, while others were architectural vistas depicting urban buildings. Other landscapes show episodes from mythology, the most famous demonstrating scenes from the ''[[Odyssey]]''.<ref>Janson, p. 191</ref>

In the cultural point of view, the art of the ancient East would have known landscape painting only as the backdrop to civil or military narrative scenes.<ref>according to [[Ernst Gombrich]].</ref> This theory is defended by [[Franz Wickhoff]], is debatable. It is possible to see evidence of Greek knowledge of landscape portrayal in Plato's ''[[Critias (dialogue)|Critias]]''  (107b–108b): <blockquote>... and if we look at the portraiture of divine and of human bodies as executed by painters, in respect of the ease or difficulty with which they succeed in imitating their subjects in the opinion of onlookers, we shall notice in the first place that as regards the earth and mountains and rivers and woods and the whole of heaven, with the things that exist and move therein, we are content if a man is able to represent them with even a small degree of likeness&nbsp;...<ref>Plato. ''[[Critias (dialogue)|Critias]]''  (107b–108b), trans W.R.M. Lamb 1925. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0180%3Atext%3DCriti.|Online at the Perseus Project] accessed 27 June 2006</ref></blockquote>

===Still life===
Roman [[still life]] subjects are often placed in illusionist niches or shelves and depict a variety of everyday objects including fruit, live and dead animals, seafood, and shells. Examples of the theme of the glass jar filled with water were skillfully painted and later served as models for the same subject often painted during the [[Renaissance]] and [[Baroque]] periods.<ref>Janson, p. 192</ref>

===Portraits===
{{further|Roman portraiture}}
[[File:Portrait of family of Septimius Severus - Altes Museum - Berlin - Germany 2017.jpg|thumb|upright|left|The [[Severan Tondo]], a panel painting of the imperial family, c. 200 AD; [[Antikensammlung Berlin|Antikensammlung, Berlin]]]]
[[File:Fayum-11.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Fayum mummy portrait]] of a woman from [[Roman Egypt]] with a ringlet hairstyle. [[Royal Museum of Scotland]].]]

[[Pliny the Elder|Pliny]] complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out&nbsp;... Indolence has destroyed the arts."<ref>John Hope-Hennessy, ''The Portrait in the Renaissance'',  [[Bollingen Foundation]], New York, 1966, pp. 71–72</ref><ref>[[Pliny the Elder]], ''[[Natural History (Pliny)|Natural History]]'' XXXV:2 trans H. Rackham 1952.  Loeb Classical Library</ref>

In Greece and Rome, wall painting was not considered as high art. The most prestigious form of art besides sculpture was [[panel painting]], i.e. [[tempera]] or [[encaustic painting]] on wooden panels. Unfortunately, since wood is a perishable material, only a very few examples of such paintings have survived, namely the [[Severan Tondo]] from {{circa|200 AD}}, a very routine official portrait from some provincial government office, and the well-known [[Fayum mummy portraits]], all from Roman Egypt, and almost certainly not of the highest contemporary quality. The portraits were attached to burial mummies at the face, from which almost all have now been detached. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The background is always monochrome, sometimes with decorative elements.<ref>Janson, p. 194</ref> In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Greco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones. They are remarkably realistic, though variable in artistic quality, and may indicate that similar art which was widespread elsewhere but did not survive. A few portraits painted on glass and medals from the later empire have survived, as have coin portraits, some of which are considered very realistic as well.<ref>Janson, p. 195</ref>

===Gold glass===
{{main|Gold glass}}
{{further|List of gold-glass portraits}}
[[File:Galla Placidia (rechts) und ihre Kinder.jpg|thumb|left|Detail of the [[gold glass]] medallion in [[Brescia]] ([[Museo di Santa Giulia]]), most likely [[Alexandria]]n, 3rd century AD<ref name="howells 2015 p7">Daniel Thomas Howells (2015). "[http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Late_Antique_Gold_Glass_online.pdf A Catalogue of the Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum (PDF).]" London: the British Museum (Arts and Humanities Research Council). Accessed 2 October 2016, p. 7: "Other important contributions to scholarship included the publication of an extensive summary of gold glass scholarship under the entry ‘Fonds de coupes’ in Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq's comprehensive Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie in 1923. Leclercq updated Vopel's catalogue, recording 512 gold glasses considered to be genuine, and developed a typological series consisting of eleven iconographic subjects: biblical subjects; Christ and the saints; various legends; inscriptions; pagan deities; secular subjects; male portraits; female portraits; portraits of couples and families; animals; and Jewish symbols. In a 1926 article devoted to the brushed technique gold glass known as the Brescia medallion (Pl. 1), Fernand de Mély challenged the deeply ingrained opinion of Garrucci and Vopel that all examples of brushed technique gold glass were in fact forgeries. The following year, de Mély's hypothesis was supported and further elaborated upon in two articles by different scholars. A case for the Brescia medallion's authenticity was argued for, not on the basis of its iconographic and orthographic similarity with pieces from Rome (a key reason for Garrucci's dismissal), but instead for its close similarity to the Fayoum mummy portraits from Egypt. Indeed, this comparison was given further credence by Walter Crum's assertion that the Greek inscription on the medallion was written in the Alexandrian dialect of Egypt. De Mély noted that the medallion and its inscription had been reported as early as 1725, far too early for the idiosyncrasies of Graeco-Egyptian word endings to have been understood by forgers."

"Comparing the iconography of the Brescia medallion with other more closely dated objects from Egypt, Hayford Peirce then proposed that brushed technique medallions were produced in the early 3rd century, whilst de Mély himself advocated a more general 3rd-century date. With the authenticity of the medallion more firmly established, Joseph Breck was prepared to propose a late 3rd to early 4th century date for all of the brushed technique cobalt blue-backed portrait medallions, some of which also had Greek inscriptions in the Alexandrian dialect. Although considered genuine by the majority of scholars by this point, the unequivocal authenticity of these glasses was not fully established until 1941 when Gerhart Ladner discovered and published a photograph of one such medallion still in situ, where it remains to this day, impressed into the plaster sealing in an individual loculus in the Catacomb of Panfilo in Rome (Pl. 2). Shortly after in 1942, Morey used the phrase ‘brushed technique’ to categorize this gold glass type, the iconography being produced through a series of small incisions undertaken with a gem cutter's precision and lending themselves to a chiaroscuro-like effect similar to that of a fine steel engraving simulating brush strokes."</ref>]]

[[Gold glass]], or gold sandwich glass, was a technique for fixing a layer of [[gold leaf]] with a design between two fused layers of glass, developed in [[Hellenistic glass]] and revived in the 3rd century AD.  There are a very few large designs, including a very fine group of portraits from the 3rd century with added paint, but the great majority of the around 500 survivals are roundels that are the cut-off bottoms of wine cups or glasses used to mark and decorate graves in the [[Catacombs of Rome]] by pressing them into the mortar. They predominantly date from the 4th and 5th centuries. Most are Christian, though there are many pagan and a few Jewish examples. It is likely that they were originally given as gifts on marriage, or festive occasions such as New Year.  Their [[iconography]] has been much studied, although artistically they are relatively unsophisticated.<ref>Beckwith, 25-26,</ref>  Their subjects are similar to the catacomb paintings, but with a difference balance including more portraiture.  As time went on there was an increase in the depiction of saints.<ref>Grig, throughout</ref>  The same technique began to be used for gold [[tesserae]] for mosaics in the mid-1st century in Rome, and by the 5th century these had become the standard background for religious mosaics.

The earlier group are "among the most vivid portraits to survive from Early Christian times. They stare out at us with an extraordinary stern and melancholy intensity",<ref>Honour and Fleming, Pt 2, "The Catacombs" at illustration 7.7</ref> and represent the best surviving indications of what high quality Roman portraiture could achieve in paint. The Gennadios medallion in the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in New York, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Late Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local [[dialect]] features.  He had perhaps been given or commissioned the piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition.<ref>Weitzmann, no. 264, entry by J.D.B.; see also no. 265; [http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/170006564 Medallion with a Portrait of Gennadios], Metropolitan Museum of Art, with better image.</ref>  One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an [[Early Medieval]] [[crux gemmata]] in [[Brescia]], in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and [[Ostrogoths|Gothic]] queen [[Galla Placida]] and her children;<ref>Boardman, 338-340; Beckwith, 25</ref> in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of [[Isis]].<ref>Vickers, 611</ref>  This is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality.<ref>Grig, 207</ref> The inscription on the medallion is written in the [[Greeks in Egypt|Alexandrian dialect of Greek]] and hence most likely depicts a family from [[Roman Egypt]].<ref>Jás Elsner (2007). "The Changing Nature of Roman Art and the Art Historical Problem of Style," in Eva R. Hoffman (ed), ''Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Medieval World'', 11-18. Oxford, Malden & Carlton: Blackwell Publishing. {{ISBN|978-1-4051-2071-5}},  p. 17, Figure 1.3 on p. 18.</ref> The medallion has also been compared to other works of contemporaneous Roman-Egyptian artwork, such as the [[Fayum mummy portraits]].<ref name="howells 2015 p7"/> It is thought that the tiny detail of pieces such as these can only have been achieved using [[Lens (optics)|lenses]].<ref>Sines and Sakellarakis, 194-195</ref>  The later glasses from the catacombs have a level of portraiture that is rudimentary, with features, hairstyles and clothes all following stereotypical styles.<ref>Grig, 207; Lutraan, 29-45 goes into considerable detail</ref>

===Genre scenes===
Roman genre scenes generally depict Romans at leisure and include gambling, music and sexual encounters.{{citation needed|date=March 2012}} Some scenes depict gods and goddesses at leisure.<ref name="Piper, p. 253"/><ref name="Janson, p. 190"/>

===Triumphal paintings===
[[File:Roman fresco from Boscoreale, 43-30 BCE, Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg|thumb|upright|Roman fresco from the [[Villa Boscoreale]], 43–30 BC, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]]]
[[File:Pompeii - Casa dei Casti Amanti - Banquet.jpg|thumb|Roman fresco with a banquet scene from the Casa dei Casti Amanti, [[Pompeii]]]]
From the 3rd century BC, a specific genre known as ''Triumphal Paintings'' appeared, as indicated by Pliny (XXXV, 22).<ref name="Pliny">[[Natural History (Pliny)]] [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&query=head%3D%232431&chunk=book online at the Perseus Project]</ref> These were paintings which showed triumphal entries after military victories, represented episodes from the war, and conquered regions and cities. Summary maps were drawn to highlight key points of the campaign.
[[Josephus]] describes the painting executed on the occasion of [[Vespasian]] and [[Titus]]'s [[Destruction of Jerusalem|sack of Jerusalem]]:
 <blockquote>There was also wrought gold and ivory fastened about them all; and many resemblances of the war, and those in several ways, and variety of contrivances, affording a most lively portraiture of itself. For there was to be seen a happy country laid waste, and entire squadrons of enemies slain; while some of them ran away, and some were carried into captivity; with walls of great altitude and magnitude overthrown and ruined by machines; with the strongest fortifications taken, and the walls of most populous cities upon the tops of hills seized on, and an army pouring itself within the walls; as also every place full of slaughter, and supplications of the enemies, when they were no longer able to lift up their hands in way of opposition. Fire also sent upon temples was here represented, and houses overthrown, and falling upon their owners: rivers also, after they came out of a large and melancholy desert, ran down, not into a land cultivated, nor as drink for men, or for cattle, but through a land still on fire upon every side; for the Jews related that such a thing they had undergone during this war. Now the workmanship of these representations was so magnificent and lively in the construction of the things, that it exhibited what had been done to such as did not see it, as if they had been there really present. On the top of every one of these pageants was placed the commander of the city that was taken, and the manner wherein he was taken.<ref>Josephus, ''The Jewish Wars'' VII, 143-152 (Ch 6 Para 5). Trans. William Whiston [http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-7.htm Online] accessed 27 June 2006</ref></blockquote>

These paintings have disappeared, but they likely influenced the composition of the historical reliefs carved on military [[sarcophagus|sarcophagi]], the [[Arch of Titus]], and [[Trajan's Column]].  This evidence underscores the significance of landscape painting, which sometimes tended towards being perspective plans.

[[Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli|Ranuccio]] also describes the oldest painting to be found in Rome, in a tomb on the [[Esquiline Hill]]:

{{blockquote|It describes a historical scene, on a clear background, painted in four superimposed sections.  Several people are identified, such Marcus Fannius and Marcus Fabius. These are larger than the other figures&nbsp;... In the second zone, to the left, is a city encircled with [[Crenellation|crenellated]] walls, in front of which is a large warrior equipped with an oval buckler and a feathered helmet; near him is a man in a short tunic, armed with a spear...Around these two are smaller soldiers in short tunics, armed with spears...In the lower zone a battle is taking place, where a warrior with oval buckler and a feathered helmet is shown larger than the others, whose weapons allow to assume that these are probably Samnites.}}

This episode is difficult to pinpoint. One of Ranuccio's hypotheses is that it refers to a victory of the consul [[Fabius Maximus Rullianus]] during the second war against [[Samnites]] in 326 BC. The presentation of the figures with sizes proportional to their importance is typically Roman, and finds itself in plebeian reliefs. This painting is in the infancy of triumphal painting, and would have been accomplished by the beginning of the 3rd century BC to decorate the tomb.