ANCIENT ROMAN PORTRAITURE

Modern museums are filled with ancient sculptures, but these only reflect a tiny fraction of statuary which filled the ancient world. Very little portraiture has survived from antiquity.

Philip Matyszak

LIVING LIKE AN ANCIENT FACES IN WAX, WOOD, STONE, AND BRONZE Countless statues lined the streets and forums across the ancient world. In the first century AD there were over three thousand statues on the island of Rhodes alone. Many of these statues were of bronze and, bronze being a very useful material, almost none of these have survived. Few as the surviving specimens are, stone sculptures have fared much better than bronze statues. We know from our sources that painters and paintings were highly prized by the Romans, but they have fared even worse. Who and why? Portraiture in the ancient world happened for much the same reasons as we make non-photographic likenesses of people today: commemoration, flattery, or self-aggrandizement. Top Romans -especially emperors – added the use of imagery…

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Ancient History (Digital) - 1 Issue, AH 50

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