I’ve been working on a couple of different projects recently, including this one. I’m looking at the Romans and the Greek (Hellenistic) influences on portraiture.
The Romans were big on hybrid forms of portraiture rooted in Hellenistic art, this period was really significant in the development of portraiture and portrait art.
Picasso and De Chirico looked to Roman and Greek art and classical ideas as a way of understanding the uncertainties of the 1920s. For me it’s a way to understand human psychology and the construction and representation of the ‘Self’ in self portraiture.
Roman sculptors and painters produced only a limited amount of outstanding original fine art, preferring instead to recycle designs from Greek art, which they revered as far superior to their own.
Roman art was mainly derivative and utilitarian. It served a purpose, a higher good: the dissemination of Roman values and respect for Roman power. Classical Roman art has been immensely influential on many subsequent cultures, through revivalist movements – (1900-30) led to a return to figure painting as well as new abstract movements like Cubism.