Roman Sculpture from Augustus to Constantine

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV ROMAN PORTRAITURE FROM AUGUSTUS TO CONSTANTINE But when Greek art had run its course, when beauty of form had well-nigh been exhausted or begun to pall, certain artists, presumably Greeks, but working for Romans, began to produce portrait work of quite a new and wonderful sort; the beautiful portraits of ugly old men, of snub little boys, work which was clearly before its right time, and was swamped by idealised portraits, insipid, nay, inane, from the elegant revivalist busts of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius down to the bonnet blocks of the lower empire. Of this Roman portrait art, of certain heads of half-idiotic little Caesar brats, of sly and wrinkled old men, things which ought to be so ugly and yet are so beautiful, we say, at least, perhaps unformulated, we think, "How Renaissance!" And the secret of the beauty of these few Graeco-Roman busts, which is also that of Renaissance portrait sculp-ture, is that the beauty is quite different in kind from the beauty of Greek ideal sculpture, and obtained by quite different means.--Vernon Lee, "Euphorion," vol. ii. p. 24. Portraiture is the branch of Roman art which has been least neglected, the identification of the individuals portrayed having attracted antiquarians and historians from time immemorial. There has also been a great deal said about its realism and its " individuality "; but its true aesthetic value, the new note which it introduced into art, was never, I think, understood or clearly formulated till " Vernon Lee" wrote the passage quoted above. This was three-and-twenty years ago, and though much has been discovered since then, and her statements could be rectified in points of detail, the utterance remains true in all essentials. I can propose no better text for an essay...