By Scarlett Corner
It’s hard to be interested in Roman Britain without hearing comments about how bad Romano-British art is, though not without reason. Over the years, art from Roman Britain has attracted a reputation for being bad and compared to the glorious marble statues and colourful mosaics we’re familiar with from the rest of the empire, it’s understandable how at first glance, Romano-British art could be deemed to be subpar, carried out by artists without the skills to replicate the art pieces from the urban centre of the empire, Rome. However, following recent conversations about imperialism and colonialism, there has been a renewed interest in the validity of the idea that said art was bad and the artists unskilled. Roman art is a very intense subject, with some believing that there is no such thing as Roman art – if you’ve ever heard about how the Romans copied everything from the Greeks, this is one of the reasons. This notwithstanding, the idea of Roman art communicates images of beautiful statues in Rome and throughout Italy, huge statues and monuments which look so realistic it's eery. As the Romans expanded across the Mediterranean, and then further into Britain, the soldiers and people who settled there brought art and artists with them, and would even employ local artists to create pieces for them in the Roman style, or as close could be managed given the different raw materials, and the stylistic precedent of the location they were in.
The gravestone of Regina of Arbeia is a useful starting point for this discussion, as it is a gravestone which portrays a woman in what has been assumed to be the traditional British dress of her people, combined with Roman symbols of femininity – such as the distaff and spindle she holds and the basket of wool at her side. Here we see a combination of Roman and traditional Celtic motifs. Regina wears a sleeved tunic with a floor length skirt, and a coat with a ruffled collar, a feature prominent in Celtic sleeved tunics worn by women at the time, as well as being similar to a piece of clothing referred to as the Gallic coat. In particular, it is the accessories worn by Regina that truly differentiate her from the typical Roman matron. Around her neck she wears a twisted ring or torques, which is mentioned in Roman literature as being an item of personal adornment worn by Celtic warriors, though this precedes Regina as it was the fashion in the first century BCE, suggesting it's inclusion here is an anachronistic nod to the past, and possibly to tradition. What is most important is that such an obvious combination of Roman and Celtic motifs suggests that this may have been employed in other pieces, and with different methodology, perhaps, as we will go on to see, by depicting Roman images in a more local style.
Gravestone of Regina of Arbeia (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2nd CE)
With that in mind, let us look at the gravestone of Dannicus. An iconic symbol in Cirencester, Dannicus is shown riding a horse in battle and trampling an enemy, a fairly typical way of representing deceased horsemen going all the way back to Classical Greece. Such images also appear on the Column of Trajan, which depicts the emperor Trajan’s conquering of Dacia. This shows just how common the motif was throughout the Roman empire, in that it spanned from Rome itself all the way to Britain. In all three examples, the motif is the same – a man on horseback wielding a spear and trampling over his enemies. What is interesting is that Dannicus, the example from Roman Britain, has been referred to as simple and crude, which when compared to the others is almost an understandable conclusion. The figure of Dannicuslacks realism and naturalism – his limbs are doughy and without proper definition, almost two dimensional compared to the liveliness of the Greek and Roman examples. The rendering of Dannicus doesn’t show any particular desire to show how bodies move and exist in a natural environment, which is what sets it apart from other depictions of the same motif. The supposed low quality could be explained away as an unskilled British artist, commissioned to create an unfamiliar image without years of practice like artists closer to Rome
Left to right: Grave Stele of Dexileos (Greece, 390 BCE), Gravestone of Dannicus (Cirencester, 1stCE), Scene from Trajan’s column (Rome, 113 CE)
However, when we look at Romano-British art more widely, Dannicus starts to resemble a pattern of stylistic execution.Instead of blaming unskilled British artists for shoddy work, it becomes clear that artists in Britain were not incapable of rendering figures naturalistically, but more so that they had no desire to. A relief of the deity Mercury shows the same doughy limbs as on Dannicus’ gravestone, and also seems to reject realism and naturalism in its appearance, though in a more obvious manner. A relief depicting three deities also shows a lack of concern for the scene in which the figures are rendered, with there being little thought to the movement of the figures or how they would exist in real life.
Left to right: Relief of Mercury (Herefordshire, 2nd/3rd CE), Relief of Three Deities (Northumberland, 3rd CE)
Romano-British art has long been accused of being lesser quality, but I think this is an obstacle in appreciating Roman ideas and motifs which are created in a local style, with these priorities in mind. Whilst the Greeks and Romans were obsessed with realism and verism, perhaps the tradition in Pre-Roman and Roman Britain favoured a more stylistic approach, uncaring towards whether the figures depicted looked particularly realistic or not. Considering the conversations around imperialism, it is interesting to interpret Romano-British art as yet another skilful way of the Romans integrating with conquered cultures, in which motifs and ideas merged for a smoother assimilation. By rephrasing Romano-British art from ‘crude to ‘stylistic’ in conversation, we can have more nuanced conversations about Roman imperialism, settlement and assimilation. The fact that provincial Roman art is different to central Roman art does not mean that the provincial version is bad, or crude, or worse, but instead is evidence of a variety of artistic methodologies and traditions in antiquity, some of which were changed and influenced by Roman imperial expansion.
As well as the above, we can also appreciate the cool and quirky British pieces for what they are – not entirely Roman, not entirely British, but incredibly interesting, and fun to look at!
Scarlett is an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, with a keen interest in Imperial Roman art and history.
Comentarios