1. Today, we'll continue our examination of ancient Roman sculpture, we’ve already looked at portrait sculpture which are busts created to commemorate people who had died, and we’ve looked at relief sculpture, or sculpting on walls, and today we’ll look at yet another category of sculpture, copies, Roman sculptors often made copies of famous Greek sculptures.
2. You see, in the late 4th century BC, the Romans began a campaign to expand the Roman Empire, and in 300 years they had conquered most of the Mediterranean area and parts of Europe, you know the saying, to the victor belong the spoils? Well, the Roman army returned to Rome with many works of Greek art, it’s probably fair to say that the Romans were impressed be Greek art and culture and they began making copies of the Greek statues.
3. Now the dominant view in traditional art is that Roman artists lacked creativity and skill, especially compared to the Greek artists who came before them, essentially, the traditional view, a view that’s been prevalent for over 250 years, is that the Romans copied Greek sculptures because they couldn’t create sculpture of their own, but, finally some contemporary art historians have challenged this view.
4. Under the Emperor Augustus at the height of the Roman Empire, portrait statues were sent throughout the empire, they were supposed to communicate specific ideas about the emperor and the imperial family, and to help inhabitants of the conquered areas become familiar with the Roman way of life, you know, Roman coins were also distributed throughout the empire.
5. The coins were easy to distribute and they allowed people to see the emperor or at least his likes, and served as an additional reminder to let them know, well, who was in charge, and the images helped people become familiar with the emperor, statues of him in different roles were sent all over the empire, now, actually some Roman sculptures were original but others were exact copies of Greek statues and some Roman sculptures were combinations of some sort.
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