INTRODUCTION: REPRESENTING THE PRINCIPATE – THE EVOLUTION OF ROMAN ART FROM AUGUSTUS TO DOMITIAN

The last chapter examined the origins of classicism – that is, the use of Classical Greek styles and visual formats for expressive purposes – within the Hellenistic era. It analyzed some of the numerous and diverse contexts in which retrospective sculptures appeared, focusing on sites associated with the traditional Greek polis but incorporating as well Hellenistic courts and panhellenic sanctuaries. My overarching aim was to illustrate the influential nature of past artistic traditions in a period characterized by radical change. At the same time, I used close readings of particular works of art, inspired by the Aphrodite of Acrocorinth, to show how these later Hellenistic images reinterpreted their model in terms of style, iconography, context, and meaning; this analysis helped to demonstrate the flexible and creative character of Hellenistic retrospective sculpture.

This chapter will examine the question of how artistic translation worked in the Early Roman Empire: how a Classical Greek image, carefully fashioned for a particular context, could be transmitted to Rome for new patrons and purposes, and could, at length, take on a canonical form very different from that of the original. To do so, I will survey an array of artworks from c. 50 B.C. to A.D. 100. The focus is on monumental “one-off” sculptures – a fragmentary group from the Forum Augustum, the Victoria of Brescia, and so on – within their archaeological contexts, seen against the background of more modest mass-produced works.