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Week 9-10:

The Acropolis Program: be able to recognize the 4 main buildings and know the issues involved with them; sculpture details have been very limited for you, know what we put on. Know the Attalid reshaping of Athens, esp. at the Acropolis (the great chariot plinth at the Propylaia, later spoliated by Augustus, and the placement of the victory series).
 

The Great Altar at Pergamon & the Gallic Victory Monuments:
Know the isues of program, style and siting from lecture and section. For the victory statues, know the "Dying Gaul" and the "Gaul Killing Himself & His Wife". For the Altar, key scenes to be able to recognize are the sea-battles and the Dionysos combats of the E, entrance facade, the Cybele round the corner, the details that refer to contemporary wars (lion and bull monsters from the NE tradition, and giant in Macedonian armor, re the Attalids' wars with the Seleukids), and the Zeus and Athena groups from the W face. Remember that Heracles once stood on Zeus' other side. For the Telephos frieze, know the details of Auge & the Ark, and Heracles Finding the Infant Telephos. Forthe "Altar" as a whole, remember that statues once stood between its columns (overlife-size, calm draped figures), and that under life-size animal figures and animated divine statues stood on the roof.

Hellenistic & Republican Sculpture:
The Terme Prince: ca. 200-150 BC, found in Rome. If this is a figure of a hellenistic prince, it shuld be a gift from allie of Rome. If it is an image of a Republican general, it shows the adaptation by Republican leaders of royal forms and style going back to Alexander. Whymany scholars think this is a Roman: it has no diadem; the only real parallels for the facial stubble, and the way the hair is cut at the brow, are Roman.

The "Brutus": now also dated to the late 3rd c. at the earliest, probably 2nd c. BC. NOT Etruscan, but Roman.

The Augustus from Primaporta:
- marble copy of a bronze original from Rome, currently dated to ca.20-15 BC. The image of Livia's husband was found very near the entrance to the painted garden room suite that makes Livia's Primaporta villa famous (it is about 10 Roman miles from the city). We know this copy of a free-standing bronze  stood in a niche or against a wall, because the back was left roughly carved; the architecture here is not well-known, but the statue seems to come from the area of a great peristyle, that is, a garden portico.
Missing are the attribute(s) cradled in the left arm (sword? lance? branch?), and perhaps held in the upraised right hand, lifted in a gesture of salute. A.'s bare feet are symbolic costume, as the Amor riding in next to him on a dolphin as if from sea to shore and waving a little cloth is a symbolic companion (both are descendants of Venus); "real" are his cuirass, tunic, and paludamentum (the general's cloak wound round his hips and arm). The cuirass shows a very elaborate metal artifact, decorated in relief: above, the heavens (sky god, and the chariots of celestial lights, probably dawn), and below, the earth (Terra Mater with her cornucopia). In the middle is the inhabited empire: center, a Roman receives from a Parthian the legionary standrd9s) captured by Iran from earlier Roman assaults and returned to Augustus in a great diplomatic "victory", and right and left sit dejected personifications of pacified Western provinces, Gaul & Spain. At Augustus' hips ride two of his patron gods on their symbolic animals (Apollo on a griffin, his sister Diana on a stag.)
Comparanda - Doryphoros of Polykleitos, Hermes of Praxiteles, Terme Prince, Brutus. Conventionally compared to the Doryphoros, we now recognize that it has a 'Polykeitan" torso inserted within different over-all proportions, and that the actual pose, proportions, mix of drapery styles, and multi- figure grouping reflect very much also 4th-c. and Hellenistic trends; the mix of youthful and mature traits in Augustus' face are also far more like Hellenistic-era images than like the blank oval of 5th-c. figure. The very "Classical" drapery of the tunic skirt is a mark too of eclectic of Hellenistic retrospective; the Laocoon treats the cloth flung over its altar in similar ways, and the Ara Pacis Venus panel mixes "5th-c" and "Hellenistic" figure types with similar eclecticism.

The Laocoon: we know that the piece, found at Rome, was made at Rome by the reign of Tiberius; indeed, very recent findings about the date of Sperlonga hint that it may have been made for Augustus himself. (The artists whom the Flavian Pliny said had made it, signed sculptures for the water-grotto of a very early imperial villa at Sperlonga found a few decades ago. Fyi, those are "Homeric" too - they show Odysseus in events from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The signatures are on the base of a huge group of Odysseus' ship attacked by the snaky-legged female sea-monster Scylla.) It ended up in the palace collections of the Flavian emperors, much of which had come from the Julio-Claudian art galleries accumulated by Nero; Pliny saw it in the palace of Titus. Many scholars have wanted to believe that the well-documented workshop was copying a much earlier Hellenistic work, now lost, because the statue is so beautiful and because it seems influenced by the Great Altar at Pergamon; others, like myself, think that neither of those features rules out an original Roman era-creation. (Fyi a number of versions in different scales were found in Rome in the Renaissance; we don't know if the statue we have is the one Pliny saw, or a replica of "the" masterpiece original.)
  The story: L. was a Trojan priest of Apollo, who was killed with his two sons by the gods he served so that he would not stop the entrance of the Trojan Horse into the city - the Greek trick that assured its fated fall, and (for Romans) the birth of their own people from its refugees. He was sacrficing by the sea-shore, when two great serpents came up out of the waves; you see him fallen back on his own altar, his clothing falen back over that stone, struggling to keep himself and his children from death. Homer did not spell out the episode; what you see was treated by Augustus' epic poets Vergil and (especially) Ovid.

Week 10-11 

Roman House Art:

Understand the "4 Styles", and be able to recognize:
- the Boscoreale room now in the Met in NY
- the Villa ofthe Mysteries room: know its main characteristics as discussed in lecture
- the House of the Faun, from lecture and takehomes
- the House of the Vettii: understand the main painting of the "Ixion room" and its best preserved pendant, how pendant programs work, and remember what the complementary salon (Pentheus room) is like.
- understand what frescoes can tell us about art in other media, like statue installations, and architectural tastes in structure & veneer.
- cameos (agate and blue glass): this popular Imperial technique technique is originally Alexandrian (Hellenistic Egypt), its artists first brought to Rome by Augustus after his defeat of Cleopatra at Actium.

Rome: Triumphal Monuments

The Male Commemorative Portrait:
  as general (imperator): cuirass statue, with tunic and paludamentum (general's cloak); cloaked only; nude with lance or with armor by feet; equestrian
  as magistrate: in toga; as priest: in toga, veiled (toga pulled over head)

Julio-Claudian:
Primaporta Augustus
Ara Pacis, det. S. frieze, Agrippa as togate priest

Antonine:
Equestrian Marcus Aurelius, gilt bronze, life-size, from Rome, now museum by Campidoglio piazza. MA as cloaked general, as mounted general riding in parade, arm up and hand out in salute. Typical Antonine image: thick curly beard and hair- cap, impassive face, carved eyes as if looking upwards and to the side. - This image was preserved in the Middle Ages because thought to be Constantine, mounted before the Lateran, then installed in the Campidoglio piazza (the Capitoline hill) designed by Michelangelo, see views. Recently restored (see color with gilt traces visible), and kept inside because of pollution, replaced by a cast.

Severan:
Bust of Caracalla from Rome, marble, life-size, as cloaked general. The bust "excerpts" from the figure of a (mounted) general in motion; C. turns his head sharply to his left, scowling in fierce concentration as if towards an enemy. Typical 3rd-c. soldier-emperor: short cropped hair and beard, heavily lined and fierce expression.
- compare: Alexander in Alexander Mosaic.

Late Roman:
Colossal Constantine, Conservatori head. Broken from seated statue put in Basilica of Constantine (spoliated from Maxentius) 313-15, a victory monument like Arch of Contantine for same victories. Typical 4th-5th-c. emperor: Constantine returns to shaven, "youthful" image with short groomed hair, imitating Augustus & Trajan, with impassive expression and upturned eyes. Compare det. Arch of Constantine below, recut Hadrian tondo head: youthful face, same hair, fleshy and lined impassive face.

Display forms: on pedestal;
Column, standing - cf. Column of Trajan
Arch, in triumphal chariot - cf. Arch of Titus.
- arches: start in Republic. Single or triple; before body of arch columns seem to support entablature of "attic", which has large inscription plaque, (lost) bronze triumphal chariot group of the triumphator above. From Augustus on, reserved to imperial family. Imperial relief decoration formats: small frieze under attic with triumph procession; panel "pictures" in passageway, and/or on outer faces of arch; in arch spandrels, flying victories for main passage, at side passages reclining rivers.

Arch of Titus. Flavian, Marble over concrete core, partially restored. On Velia, where road to Palace branches up Palatine for the Sacred Way of the triumph route. Posthumous, for Titus' Jewish War triumph, put up by his brother the next Emperor Domitian. Format, with passage like a room with panels, niches outside: compare House of the Vettii Ixion room (see Roman House Arts).
Passage reliefs: Titus in triumph procession in quadriga, crowned by Victory, escorted by Honos and Virtus, and human lictors, soldier and senators. Opposite: booty carried on display litter by slaves, moving toward triumphal arch, title placards visible behind. This is the gold Menorah of Herod's Temple at Jersualem, sacked by Titus, on display in Vespasian's Temple of Peace. Context: Jewish gold-glass medallion, from a Late Roman Jewish catacomb burial at Rome.

Column of Trajan
- The first portrait column decorated with narrative reliefs, later imitated by Marcus Aurelius. In situ, between the Greek and Latin law libraries of Trajan's Forum complex, behind his Basilica Ulpia. The whole complex was financed from the spoils of conquering Dacia.
  Large base designed to be Trajan's tomb chamber, carved as if a weapons booty pile, over door Victories and the inscription, which celebrates the cutting away of the Quirinal to make the Forum and says the column (height, a symbolic 100 Roman feet) is its marker. The column had an inner stair leading to a platform at top under the military portrait of Trajan (where the Renaissance saint's image of Peter stands now). Eagles stood at each corner of the base, draping a laurel garland from their beaks; the column "base" was also a triumphal garland. The spiral relief band starts over the door; at the "back" (open side of court) Trajan's army crosses the Danube (reclining river god) on a wonderful pontoon bridge, to launch the conquest of Dacia narrated above. The landscape narrative is closely related to the campaign pantings carried in triumphs.
  Context: contemporary coin, showing Trajan's statue and the base door; Odyssey Landscapes detail (1st c. BC landscape painting at Rome).
  Compare & contrast: Great Trajanic Frieze, now cut up and re- installed on the Arch of Constantine. You see the reconstructed cast at Rome, and a detail in the middle passage of the Arch - your takehome had another section. Part of the same victory program, and probably from the same Forum.
 Know: Column, plan of Forum. You can see how Trajan added it onto a whole sequence of earlier and smaller imperial fora (of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Vespasian and Domitian/Nerva.)

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Arch of Constantine. Triple arch, white marble body veneer, yellow marble columns, red-purple porphyry band around middle framing the tondi(now mostly lost). The rich mass of image zones suggests what 2nd and 3rd c. arches had come to look like. We look at it in two ways: as a Constantinian monument, and as the site of earlier reliefs (here we look at Trajan's frieze and Hadrian's tondi.)
 Put up by Constantine for his defeat of his rival emperor's army at the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome (the occasion of his "conversion" to faith in the Christian god, who told him in a vision that he would triumph under the sign of the Chi-Rho cross monogram.) Set up near the Colosseum, to make a piazza at the foot of the Sacred Way beyond the Arch of Titus, see views.
 The reliefs here are a combination of new carvings (pedestals; campaign and audience small frieze, spandrels, Sun and Moon tondi on ends, the lot bronzes on top) and tranferred sculpture from earlier "good" emperors' monuments (from Trajan's Forum, the battle frieze in the middle passage and the attic on the ends, and the captive Dacians set up like caryatids in the attic; from a monument of Hadrian, the round hunting tondi; fro an arch of Maruc Aurelius, the panels about campaign and triumph in the attic). [*Nb. this is not the first spolia arch; Diocletian, who established the  Tetrarchic system of multi-emperor rule Constantine fought to join, had alread put a (lost) one up North of the Forum Romanum.] All the earlier emperors' head were recut, though many are now missing or post-ancient additions.

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--- Hadrian's Hunt Tondi:
- currently a set of 4 pairs of scenes, making up a sequence of hunts as if a set of campaign battles and victory sacrifices in a landscape. This is the first Roman emperor monument to celebrate his military virtues with hunt imagery, reviving the image of Alexander the Great and of Hercules, which have old NE roots. Three animals are slain, a bear, a boar, and a lion, followed by sacrifice to an appropriate god at a woodland sanctuary with a fine "masterpiece" statue. Extant are Silvanus (missing his animal scene), Diana, Apollo, and Hercules. You look at:
  The bear hunt, boar hunt, and shrines of Diana and Apollo.
We don't know how much longer the set was, or where it was intalled, but it must have been on  major victory arch or portico of Hadrian. (Such a portico once stretched before the Pantheon.) The round form of the reliefs is also highly innovative, without extant parallels.

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As Constantine's monument: det., recut portrait from the boar hunt. Note how they make a visual pattern with the small frieze underneath; in this setting, see too how close we are to the Colosseum, where beast hunts before the emperor and people were an important entertainment.

From the small frieze (context slide, the battles in North Italy and at Rome around the rest of the arch), the side towards the piazza: both panels, over the side arches, showed C. in audience at Rome. For you:
   Constantine in the Forum, H&F: The general-emperor (now headless) stands on the speaker platform (Rostra) at the W end of the Forum, orating to the gesturing crowd. In the "butterfly" perspective the facades of the Forum's great older temples and basilicas strech on each side. Behind C. are the recent column monuments of the Tetrarchs, with Jupiter on the middle column over C. The image shows two seated emperor statues at each end of the Rostra, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius framing C.

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Week 10-11 Section: Augustus' Campus Martius and the Ara Pacis

- Know about what you discussed with your TAs: the triumphal and dynastic complex built up of the Solarium and its obelisk marker, Augstus' Etruscan-looking Mausoleum, and finally the Ara Pacis. Note too that the Pantheon (whose Augustan inscription Hadrian replaced when he restored it) faced towards this complex. Jut beginning to be published are new findings, that the Augustan building was also round, like the Mausoleum, and faced the direction it does now; fyi it was a ruler temple, with Julius Caesar inside with Venus & Mars, and Agrippa and Augustus in the great porch (a program like that of the mausoleum and the Ara Pacis.) About the Mausoleum: remember what the reconstructions omit, that a statue of Augustus was elevated on top, above the trees planted on the artificial earth-mound, dominating the view. The reconstructions do hint at the trees that Augustus planted also to make a park here, which is relevant to the imagery of the Ara Pacis.

The Ara Pacis, 13-9 BC. Lecture and section slides are grouped here to make a whole.
  Know: how it is oriented along the Via Lata/ Flaminia, leading into the city (the modern Corso, view toward the Capitoline hill from the old Roman gate site) - the route Augustus took from the North when he returned from pacifying Gaul & Spain in 13 BC. For this occasion the Senate voted him this Altar of Augustan Peace, as he tells us in his autobiography (Res Gestae), once inscribed outisde his Mausoleum. The modern site is wrong - Mussolini had it restored on a nearby different location.
  Know: the main outlines of the program and the styles and formats of the monument (outer and inner shell, inner altar), and understand the comparisons made in lecture and section. Be able to recognize the W Aeneas panel, the E Venus panel, and the main divisions of the side processions [priests; foreign child hostage, a Celt and an Asiatic princeling; family including women and children], and from the S. side the figure of Augustus near Aeneas,  Agrippa further down, followed by Livia and Augustus' stepsons and family. Women and children were not allowed at most official sacrifices, and this is also the first time they are shown in Roman political narrative. We argue about the occasion and intended date of this ritual procession; the occasion it fits best is a "supplicatio", when officials representing the senate and people of Rome, and also Augustus' family, celebrated him at the Senate's voted direction.

Week 11-13 Late Antique to Medieval:
Here especially recognize that H&F will separate details of the same thing, which we try to rectify in the slide sets. Try to synchronize for yourself "secular' and "religious" monuments of the same periods, and recognize the necesary artificiality of chapter breaks (i.e. the 3rd 74th c. sarcophagi clearly group together).