Ancient Roman (Unknown)
Roman
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Ancient Roman sculpture borrowed heavily from the Greeks but developed its own distinct character. Where Greek sculptors idealized, Roman sculptors documented. Their greatest contribution was veristic portraiture: unflinching, warts-and-all depictions of real people, complete with wrinkles, sagging skin, and receding hairlines. This honesty was a point of pride in Republican Rome, signaling wisdom and service.
Roman sculptors worked across a huge range. They produced colossal public monuments like Trajan's Column (with 2,662 carved figures spiraling up 35 meters), intimate portrait busts, mythological scenes on sarcophagi, and relief panels celebrating military victories. They perfected the technique of copying Greek originals in marble, and most of what we know about lost Greek bronzes comes from these Roman copies. Roman techniques and ideals resurfaced directly in the Renaissance and Neoclassicism.
Under the Empire, portraiture shifted toward idealization again, with Augustus borrowing Greek Classical style to project authority. Later emperors swung between realism and propaganda as it suited them. Major Roman sculpture collections exist at the Vatican Museums, the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
