Friday, December 18, 2015

Roman marble sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum

Portrait of a mother
Fragment of marble funerary altar with pediment
AD 120-130
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

General with Corinthian Helmet
Marble copy of 4th century BC Greek bronze
1st-2nd century AD
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Roman sculpture cannot be examined in isolation. It was an integral part of everyday life and was exhibited in public places like fora, basilicas, temples, theaters, and baths. ... Roman art was not art for art's sake. Even Roman replicas of famous Greek originals were valued more as reflections of a patron's refined Hellenic taste than as works in their own right. Public portraits celebrated the virtues and accomplishments of those they represented or were arranged in groups that associated the honorand with an illustrious predecessor or an eventual heir. Private portraits were, at least at first, an integral part of ancestral veneration."  from Roman Sculpture / by Diana E.E. Kleiner. (Yale University Press, 1992)

Sarcophagus
Carved marble with figures of Theseus & Ariadne
AD 130-150
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

"We could pass over in silence the truly countless number of sarcophagi if their artistic value was to be the sole criterion. These stone coffins are almost without exception works from the imperial period. ... Only in a very few of these monuments can the treatment of individual details be described as good; in many of them it is only moderate, and in the great majority wretched."  Jakob Burckhardt writing in 1855

Dancing Maenad
Marble copy of 5th century BC Greek relief 
27 BC-AD 14
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Calyx  Krater as Garden Urn
Carved marble with dancing  Maenads
1st century AD
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Statue of  a Youth
Marble copy after 5th century BC Greek bronze
1st century AD
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Statue of seated man
Marble copy after 2nd century BC Greek statue
1st century BC
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sarcophagus
Carved marble with contest between Muses & Sirens
3rd century AD
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Winkelmann's idealistic vision of Greek art is largely responsible for the fact that, with a few exceptions, from his day right down to our own times sarcophagi have played only a small role as ancient works of art. For his classical taste, the sarcophagi of the late second and third centuries, with their expressive manner and abundance of figures, were evidence of late-period style gone to seed. ... Modern Impressionist and Expressionist art have given us new ways of seeing, and as a result have completely changed our aesthetic appreciation of later sarcophagus art. We are no longer fixated on neatly arranged, classical composition; we can make a connection between the sharp contrasts in proportions and in the relief, the excessive number of images, and the unsystematic way we take in large surfaces where the eye has to jump, as it were, with aesthetic experiences that have positive connotations in today's art."  from Living with Myths : the Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi / Paul Zanker and Bjorn C. Ewald (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Statue of Eirene (personification of Peace)
Marble copy after 4th century BC Greek statue
AD 14-68
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Athena
Marble copy after 5th century BC Greek statue
1st-2nd century BC
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sarcophagus fragment
Carved marble with death of Meleager
mid-2nd century AD
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ceremonial Pillar
Carved marble with twining snake and wreath
1st-2nd century AD
Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art

"This pillar may be either votive or sepulchral. The snake is both an attribute of the healing god Asklepios, suggesting this object may been a thank offering on behalf of one cured of an illness, and a potent symbol of the underworld, alluding perhaps to a funereal function. The wreath, meanwhile, evokes victory in the broadest sense, as well as the realm of Dionysos, whose mythological rebirth makes his iconography particularly appropriate in a tomb context."  Metropolitan Museum curator's notes