Identifier: romansculpturefr00stro (find matches)
Title: Roman sculpture from Augustus to Constantine
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Strong, Eugénie Sellers
Subjects: Sculpture, Roman Sculpture, Greco-Roman
Publisher: London : Duckworth and Co. New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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these three examples,partly because of the comparative rarity of singlestatues by the time we near the close of the third cen-tury, but chiefly because they so admirably illustrate inevery particular the return to archaic frontality.J * I.e., the sculptor is content with material or tactile dimen-sions, and no longer insists on producing tactile illusion (literallyRiegl says effect,) whereas the sculptors of the Flavian age,for instance, tried to enhance this tactile impression. f The head seems later than the statue, and probably doesnot belong to it. (From a photograph by Dr. Ashby.) % I feel that a recent writer on Roman portraits strangelymisunderstands the characteristics of frontality, when hesays that the Constantinian portrait first shows the truesolidity, the perfect roundness that sculpture should aim at.The perfect roundness of the Conservatori magistrates ! orof the Terme togatus I Why, the planes are as flat and thetransitions as sharp as the artist could well make them.
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ROMAN PORTRAITURE 385 They are the beginning of the splendid figure sculp-ture of the Middle Ages. In them are the germs of thatwonderful Romanesque which will find its noblestexpression in the great French schools of cathedralsculpture in the twelfth century, as at Chartres, forinstance, in those Ancestors of the Virgin — groupedin such life-like yet solemn pattern about the threedoors of the Royal porch—with their expressive lines,monumental pose, lucidly disposed planes, and the clearsymmetry of the parts to the whole, and of each figureto the main design. But to return to portrait heads. A massive frontal head of the period of Claudius Gothicusor Diocletian is in the Museum of Stockholm(Arndt, 317, 318).* Other examples that come withinthe same category are the grand colossal head ofConstantine the Great in the Court of the Conservatori(Helbig 55i),t the colossal bronze head in the roomof the bronzes in the same Palace,! and the head,misnamed Valens, in the Capitol (Helbig, p,

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