Читать книгу A History of Roman Art онлайн

34 страница из 48

peripteral

refers to a building, usually a temple, with a single row of columns surrounding it.

Many art history texts which cover the Roman world use a terminology of plebeian, a term referring to the Roman lower class, art versus patrician, referring to the Roman upper class, art. The former is used to refer to art whose characteristics largely follow the style and conventions of the native Italic works while the latter, patrician, refers to Classical, Greek‐inspired, works. This concept and the associated terms plebeian and patrician are not used in this book. It applies a set of class distinctions to the art that is simply not accurate. When we note the Italic (the preferred term here rather than plebeian) style of a relief dedicated by a Roman emperor, to refer to it as plebeian is absurd. These are not classes of art or people, but choices of styles that in fact do not exist in an Italic versus Greek dichotomy, but as a range of options in which in many cases elements of the styles are blended to serve the needs of the artist and patron and to speak to the viewer in a new way. Some of the best examples of this deliberate use of Greek or Italic antecedents can be found in Roman portraiture, which demonstrate the meanings inherent in much of the art. Portraits as symbols of communication, especially under the principate (period of rule by a princeps, colloquially known as an emperor) represent a dialogue between the ruler and the ruled. This is particularly true when they are not set up by emperors but by others. In some cases this means that they reflect an acceptance of the cultural, political, and social premises of Roman artistic display.