JADE_Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was the largest city in the then known world. It is thought that Rome’s population was over 1 million people when the city was at the height of its power. From Rome, the heart of government beat; military decisions were taken and the vast wealth Rome earned was invested in a series of magnificent buildings.
The Romans were a practical people: in their original works, observation was key; portrait sculptures are often meticulously detailed and un-idealized. The Romans also depicted warriors and heroic adventures, in the spirit of the Greeks who came before them. While Greek sculptors traditionally illustrated military exploits through the use of mythological allegory, the Romans used a more documentary mode.
Roman art grows out of Etruscan art, and at first it is a lot like Etruscan art. Because of this, it has a close relationship to Greek art as well. Roman art as a type of its own really gets going around 500 BC with the beginning of the Roman Republic. Roman people were particularly interested in portraiture: in making statues that really looked like one particular person, especially a famous person. Greek people were more interested in ideals: what is the most beautiful man? What is the most athletic man? But the Romans were more interested in reality.

A lot of people living in Rome seem to have believed, also, that having a good image of somebody's face was important to keeping their ghost happy after they died so they wouldn't haunt you. So throughout the time of the Roman Republic and all the way through the Roman Empire we see a lot of portraits.

While the traditional view of Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, copied, or even outright stole Greek precedents, more recent analysis has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche of Greek, Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture.

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http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.augustus.to/image/400/renia_01.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.augustus.to/other/e_topf.html&h=400&w=400&sz=21&hl=en&start=10&um=1&tbnid=XI3LGSdVPNGNEM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dancient%2Brome%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DG