Module 9 - The Art of Ancient Rome Part II

triumphal arch

- is a monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road. In its simplest form a triumphal arch consists of two massive piers connected by an arch, crowned with a flat entablature or attic on which a statue might be mounted or which bears commemorative inscriptions. The main structure is often decorated with carvings, sculpted reliefs and dedications. More elaborate triumphal arches may have multiple archways. Triumphal arches are one of the most influential and distinctive types of architecture associated with ancient Rome. Thought to have been invented by the Romans, the triumphal arch was used to commemorate victorious generals or significant public events such as the founding of new colonies, the construction of a road or bridge, the death of a member of the imperial family or the accession of a new emperor. The survival of great Roman triumphal arches such as the Arch of Titus inspired many post-Roman states and rulers, up to the present day, to erect their own arches in emulation of the Romans. Arches in the Roman style have been built in many cities around the world, most notably the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the Narva Triumphal Arch in Saint Petersburg and the Wellington Arch in London. - The origins of the Roman triumphal arch are unclear. Monumental gateways had already been in use for hundreds of years by civilizations such as the Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians and Myceneans.[1] There were precursors to the triumphal arch within the Roman world; in Italy, the Etruscans used elaborately decorated single bay arches as gates or portals to their cities. Surviving examples of Etruscan arches can still be seen at Perugia and Volterra.[2] The two key elements of the triumphal arch - a round-topped arch and a square entablature - had long been in use as separate architectural elements in ancient Greece. The Greeks made comparatively little or no use of the arch, confining it to structures such as tombs and sewers that were under external pressure, but made extensive use of entablatures in their temples. Entablatures were an essential part of the structural fabric of such buildings, as they were used to hold up the roofs. The great innovation of the Romans was to combine a round arch and a square entablature in a single free-standing structure. The columns became purely decorative elements on the outer face of arch, while the entablature, liberated from its role as a building support, became the frame for the civic and religious messages that the arch builders wished to convey.[3] The first recorded Roman triumphal arches were set up in the time of the Roman Republic.[4] Generals who were granted a triumph were termed triumphators and would erect fornices or honorific arches bearing statues to commemorate their victories. A number of fornices were built in Rome during the Republican era. Lucius Steritinus erected two in 196 BC to commemorate his victories in Hispania. Another fornix was built on the Capitoline Hill by Scipio Africanus in 190 BC, and Quintus Fabius Allobrogicus constructed one in the Roman Forum in 121 BC.[5] None of them survive today and little is known about their appearance.[4] Roman triumphal practices changed significantly at the start of the imperial period when the first Roman Emperor Augustus decreed that only emperors would be granted triumphs. The term fornix abruptly ceased to be used and was replaced by arcus, from which the English word "arch" is derived. Whereas Republican fornices were put up at the initiative and expense of the triumphator, without needing or requesting permission, imperial triumphal arches were erected for the triumphator by decree of the senate. The triumphal arch changed from being a personal monument to being an essentially propagandistic one, serving to announce and promote the presence of the ruler and the laws of the state.[2] Arches were not necessarily built as entrances, but - unlike many modern triumphal arches - they were often erected across roads and were intended to be passed through, not round.

roundels

1. (Literature / Poetry) a form of rondeau consisting of three stanzas each of three lines with a refrain after the first and the third 2. (Military) a circular identifying mark in national colours on military aircraft 3. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Architecture) a small ornamental circular window, panel, medallion, plate, disc, etc. 4. (Military / Arms & Armour (excluding Firearms)) a round plate of armour used to protect the armpit 5. (History / Heraldry) Heraldry a charge in the shape of a circle 6. (Performing Arts / Dancing) another word for roundelay [1]

equestrian statue

Ancient Greece[edit] Equestrian statuary in the West goes back at least as far as Archaic Greece. Found on the Athenian acropolis, the sixth century BC statue known as the Rampin Rider depicts a kouros mounted on horseback. Ancient Middle and Far East[edit] A number of ancient Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian reliefs show mounted figures, usually rulers, though no free standing statues are known. The Chinese Terracotta Army has no mounted riders, though cavalrymen stand beside their mounts, but smaller Tang Dynasty pottery tomb Qua figures often include them, at a relatively small scale. No Chinese portrait equestrian statues were made until modern times; statues of rulers are not part of traditional Chinese art, and indeed even painted portraits were only shown to high officials on special occasions until the 11th century.[2] Ancient Rome[edit] This horse head was once part of a large equestrian monument. ca. 40 CE. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Such statues frequently commemorated military leaders, and those statesmen who wished to symbolically emphasize the active leadership role undertaken since Roman times by the equestrian class, the equites (plural of eques) or knights. There were numerous bronze equestrian portraits (particularly of the emperors) in ancient Rome, but they did not survive because they were melted down for reuse of the alloy as coin, church bells, or other, smaller projects (such as new sculptures for Christian churches); the standing Colossus of Barletta lost parts of his legs and arms to Dominican bells in 1309. Almost the only sole surviving Roman equestrian bronze, the equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, owes its preservation on the Campidoglio, to the popular mis-identification of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, with Constantine the Great, the Christian emperor. Bamberger Reiter The Regisole ("Sun king") was a bronze classical or Late Antique equestrian monument of a ruler, highly influential during the Italian Renaissance but destroyed in 1796 in the wake of the French Revolution. It was originally erected at Ravenna, but removed to Pavia in the Middle Ages, where it stood on a column before the cathedral. A fragment of an equestrian portrait sculpture of Augustus has also survived. Medieval Europe[edit] Equestrian statues were not very frequent in the Middle ages. Nevertheless, there are some examples, like the Bamberg Horseman (German: Der Bamberger Reiter), located in Bamberg Cathedral. Another example is the Magdeburg Reiter, in the city of Magdeburg, that depicts Emperor Otto I. There are a few roughly half-size statues of Saint George and the Dragon, including the famous ones in Prague and Stockholm. The Scaliger Tombs in Verona include Gothic statues at less than lifesize. A well-known small bronze in Paris may be a contemporary portrait of Charlemagne, although its date and subject are uncertain. Renaissance[edit] The Magdeburger Reiter: a tinted sandstone equestrian monument, c. 1240, traditionally intended as a portrait of Otto I (detail), Magdeburg Donatello's Gattamelata is the first lifesize equestrian statue in bronze since antiquity; other medieval examples are in stone or wood. St. George and the Dragon, wood sculpture by Bernt Notke in Stockholm's Storkyrkan After the Romans, no surviving monumental equestrian bronze was cast in Europe until Donatello achieved the heroic bronze equestrian statue of the condottiere Gattamelata, in Padua, executed in 1445-1450. As shown by the painted equestrian Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood and that of Niccolò da Tolentino (both in Florence Cathedral), in 15th century Italy the form was associated specifically with condottieri. The statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio in Venice (1478-88) was another influential example. Titian's equestrian portrait of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor of 1548 led the way in applying the form to rulers, and Cosimo I de' Medici by Giambologna in Florence (completed 1598) is the first life-size statue to feature a ruler rather than a condotiere. Giambologna's equestrian bronze of Ferdinand de' Medici for the Piazza della SS. Annunziata was completed by his assistant, Pietro Tacca, in 1608. Tacca's last public commission was the colossal equestrian bronze of Philip IV, begun in 1634 and shipped to Madrid in 1640. In Tacca's sculpture, atop a fountain composition that forms the centerpiece of the façade of the Royal Palace, the horse rears, and the entire weight of the sculpture balances on the two rear legs—and, discreetly, its tail—a feat that had never been attempted in a figure on a heroic scale. Leonardo Da Vinci planned an equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza but was only able to create a clay model. 500 years later a large bronze horse-based on da Vinci drawings-was placed in Milan. Absolutism[edit] During the age of Absolutism, especially in France, equestrian statues were popular with rulers; Louis XIV was typical in having one outside his Palace of Versailles, and the over life-size statue in the Place Vendôme in Paris by François Girardon (1699) is supposed to be the first large modern equestrian statue to be cast in a single piece; it was destroyed in the French Revolution, though there is a small version in the Louvre. The near life-size equestrian statue of Charles I of England by Hubert Le Sueur of 1633 at Charing Cross in London is the earliest large English example, which was followed by many. The Bronze Horseman (Russian: Медный всадник, literally "The Copper Horseman") is an iconic equestrian statue, on a huge base, of Peter the Great of 1782 by Étienne Maurice Falconet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The use of French artists for both examples demonstrates the slow spread of the skills necessary for creating large works, but by the 19th century most large Western countries could produce them without the need to import skills, and most statues of earlier figures are actually from the 19th or early 20th centuries. United States[edit] In the United States, the first three full-scale equestrian sculptures were Clark Mills' Andrew Jackson (1852), Henry Kirke Brown's George Washington (1856) for Union Square and Thomas Crawford's Washington in Richmond, Virginia (1858). Mills was the first American sculptor to overcome the challenge of casting a rider on a rearing horse. The resulting sculpture was so popular he repeated it, for Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Louisiana and Nashville, Tennessee. Cyrus Edwin Dallin made a specialty of equestrian sculptures of American Indians: his Appeal to the Great Spirit stands before the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Robert Gould Shaw Monument in Boston, Massachusetts is a famous relief including an equestrian portrait. 20th Century[edit] As the twentieth century progressed the popularity of the equestrian monument declined sharply, as monarchies fell, and the military use of horses virtually vanished. The Statue of Queen Elizabeth II riding Burmese (2005) in Canada, and statues of Rani Lakshmibai in Gwalior and Jhansi, India are some of the rare portrait statues with a female riders. In America the late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed something of a revival in equestrian monuments, largely in the Southwest part of the United States. There, art centers such as Loveland, Colorado, Shidoni Foundry in New Mexico and various studios in Texas began once again producing equestrian sculpture. These revival works fall into two general categories, the memorialization of a particular individual or the portrayal of general figures, notably the American cowboy or Native Americans. Such monuments can be found throughout the American Southwest. Tallest and largest equestrian statue[edit] The monument to general Jose Gervasio Artigas in Minas, Uruguay (18 meters tall, 9 meters long, 150,000 kg) was the world's largest equestrian statue until 2009. The current largest is the Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue at Tsonjin Boldog, 54 km from Ulan Bator, Mongolia, the legendary location where Genghis Khan found the golden whip. The world's largest equestrian sculpture, when completed, will be the Crazy Horse Memorial, in South Dakota, USA at a planned 641 feet (195 m) wide and 563 feet (172 m) high, even though only the upper torso and head of the rider and front half of the horse will be depicted. Also on a huge scale, the carvings on Stone Mountain in Georgia, USA are equestrian sculpture rather than true statues, the largest bas-relief in the world. Hoof-position symbolism[edit] A popular belief - at least in the United States and the United Kingdom - is that if the horse is rearing (both front legs in the air), the rider died in battle; one front leg up means the rider was wounded in battle or died of battle wounds; and if all four hooves are on the ground, the rider died outside battle. However, there is little evidence to support this belief. In the United States, the alleged rule is especially held to apply to equestrian statues commemorating the American Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg,[3] but there is at least one instance where the rule does not hold for Gettysburg equestrian statues, and syndicated newspaper columnist Cecil Adams claims that any correlation between the positioning of hooves in a statue and the manner in which a Gettysburg soldier died is a coincidence.[4] For example, in Gettysburg, the statue of James Longstreet features his horse with one foot raised, even though Longstreet was not wounded in battle. Even the most cursory look at the statues around Washington, D.C. quickly disproves that the hoof code at all holds sway in that locale. (See http://www.snopes.com/military/statue.asp)

niche

a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it

porphyry

any igneous rock with crystals embedded in a finer groundmass of minerals

idealized sculpture

idealized features of rulers, like other Egyptian artistic conventions

naturalistic style

is any of several philosophical stances wherein all phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural are either false or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.

abstract style

uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.[1] Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. The arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time.[2] Abstract art, nonfigurative art, nonobjective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning. Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be only slight, or it can be partial, or it can be complete. Abstraction exists along a continuum. Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and representational (or realistic) art often contains partial abstraction. Both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. Among the very numerous art movements that embody partial abstraction would be for instance fauvism in which color is conspicuously and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism, which blatantly alters the forms of the real life entities depicted