Comparing Greek and Roman Sculpture

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Miles Strome Visual Expressions in Society Prof. LeRonn Phillip Brooks, Ph.D. October 25, 2013 Comparing & Critiquing Roman Sculpture To the untrained eye it is easy to believe that Roman sculptures were virtual shadows of one another, differing only in their subject matters. But this is a common misconception and with closer analysis we can see that Roman art is in fact quite dynamic. Furthermore, looking at art from a specific time period and being able to extract, compare and contrast the subtle differences between pieces is a valuable skill. It allows us to retrace they’re evolutionary footsteps and possibly understand what the artists who created them were trying to express, granting us rare insight into days buried in antiquity, a better understanding of the origin of art and culture as a whole. Formal analysis of Roman sculpture is being able to describe what you see using conventional and subjective artistic terms. The content of a subject’s character often leads to different kinds of stylistic conventions used to portray them. For example in this marble bust of Marcus Aurelius that “exemplifies the perfect ruler” or “Philosopher King” he is portrayed with thick large organic curls that cover the top and back of his head and reach down below his ears and connect with his beard in a kind of visual unity. The way the course uneven curls on his head and the hairs in his beard follow flowing dynamic and asymmetrical lines that overlap one another, seem to communicate the artists’ intention to portray the emperor as close to his real form as possible. I believe this bust due to the amount of detail surpasses most pieces that would usually classify it as naturalistic; therefore this bust must then be defined as a form of realism. In stark contrast, the hair on the bust of emperor Gaius, also known as Caligula and known for
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