Roman imperial art in Greece and Asia Minor

Description

The broad nature of Roman art is well known. Artistic developments from the Early Republic to Late Antiquity have been studied on a general basis and on the basis of trends in the provinces, influences on the main current of Greco-Roman classicism, and the emergence of new vocabularies in the late third century a.d. Still, the emphasis has always been on Rome and Italy as the hub of Roman Republican and imperial art. But the art of the Greek world in Roman times differs from the art of the Hellenistic kingdoms. It is also known, if only from its name, that Greek imperial art is related in many direct ways to Roman imperial art. Many aspects of art in Greece and Asia Minor during the Roman period must await consideration in another book. Court silverware and Greek imperial coins each receive a chapter, because they involve imperial portraits and imperial scenes, whether allegorical or real. Statues of divinities, private portraits, sepulchral reliefs, small bronzes, terracotta statuettes, and textiles of the imperial age, to cite at random, are omitted. These works of art may be characteristic of the imperial period in the hast, but they are in a sense better described as continuations of Hellenistic art in Greece and Asia Minor. The art that forms the basis of this hook is made up of a series of creative impulses that owed their existence to the Roman Empire and to the institution of Roman Emperor as head of state, chief priest, first among equals, commander-in-chief of the armies, and, in the East particularly, god on earth.