24 - Art and architecture

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The art of late antiquity embodies one of the great transitions in the history of western art. It marks the first time after the fifth century B.C. when the classical canons of Graeco-Roman forms shifted, over the whole spectrum of the representational arts, towards the less naturalistic and more abstract forms which scholars have held to be characteristic of the art of the Middle Ages. This change is marked by an apparent paradox: the juxtaposition of religious elements (pagan and Christian) and stylistic forms (naturalist and schematic) which normally we might expect to be separate and even antipathetic. The syncretisms of fourth-century art and architecture have been regarded as the visual embodiment of an intellectual and cultural process whose eventual result would be the emergence of Byzantine and Latin Christian culture. This view, which sees the importance of fourth-century art to be its teleological relation to later art, is certainly valid; but perhaps it fails to give due regard to the intrinsic interest of the visual culture of late antiquity.

The fourth and fifth centuries saw the continuation of the great traditions of classical art and architecture as they had been practiced for several centuries throughout the Roman empire. At the same time, these traditions were transformed into new, more ‘abstract’ styles set in a very different religious context. In the period with which this volume deals, A.D. 337–425, colossal statues were still being cast in the tradition of ancient imperial bronzes. Examples include the great bronze of Constantius II (emperor 337–61), now in the Museo dei Conservatori in Rome, and the large fifth-century statue brought by the Venetians to Barletta in the Middle Ages.