Roman Republican Art and Artchitecture

      Rome was born with no strong art tradition of its own. Roman art in the early years was heavily influenced by the Etruscans util Rome's expansion into the Greek-speaking areas of Sicily and southern Italy. This contact brought a huge rise in interest in Greek sculpture and many statues were imported to the capital. The Roman appetite for all forms of Greek art - architecture, sculpture, paintings, silver plate - increased even more with conquests in Greece itself, and particularly with the capture of Corinth in 146 BCE.
      Conquering generals could acquire art by plunder, but it had to be bought by theelite in Rome. In the second century BCE, to serve a booming market, there was not only a huge influx of all forms of art, but also the immigration of large numbers of Greek artists themselves. We know several artists by name: the Athenian painter Metrodoros, Demetrios the Alexandrian who painted maps, and the southern Italian sculptor Pasiteles. At the same time, in Athens and elsewhere, workshops were set up to create sculptures of mythological subjects based on earlier Greek models. These sculptural stories were imported by wealthy Romans and displayed in their gardens or reception areas (atria) of their homes.
      In architecture, more than in the other arts, there was a fusion of the Roman and Greek cultures. The Greek style of peripteral temple (columns all around) was fused with the Italic tradition of a front-facing temple on a high podium. But while the style and structure of building in Rome owe a great deal to Greece, it was the Romans alone who gave the world one profoundly significant architectural gift - concrete.

Writing: ECHOES from the past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.