Title: Ancient Decorative Art Roman Marble Sculpture Ram's Head
Shipping: $29.00
Artist: N/A
Period: Antiquity
History: N/A
Origin: N/A
Condition: Museum Quality
Item Date: 100 to 300 AD
Item ID: 6405
Roman Sculpture of a Ram's Head: Origin: Mediterranean Circa: 100 AD to 300 AD Dimensions:6.75" (17.1cm) high Collection: Classical Style: Roman Medium: Marble. This well-modeled head of a ram captures the essence of the animal with the articulated ridge running across the top of its snout. This feature gives prominence to its nostrils and mouth. Its eyes are carefully modeled as are its horns and ears. One may suggest that our head originally came from a statue because it is both executed in the round and exhibits a clean break along the lower, horizontal edge of the neck. As such, the original may have served either a decorative function adorning a garden of a Roman villa on analogy with other animal sculptures serving that purpose from Pompeii or as an adjunct for a statue depicting a deity, as seen in a selected number of examples in Italian museums.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_sculpture
The study of ANCIENT ROMAN is complicated by its relation to Greek sculpture. Many examples of even the most famous Greek sculptures, such as the Apollo Belvedere and Barberini Faun, are known only from Roman Imperial or Hellenistic "copies." At one time, this imitation was taken by art historians as indicating a narrowness of the Roman artistic imagination, but in the late 20th-century, Roman art began to be reevaluated on its own terms: some impressions of the nature of Greek sculpture may in fact be based on Roman artistry.
The strengths of Roman sculpture are in portraiture, where they were less concerned with the ideal than the Greeks or Ancient Egyptians, and produced many very characterful works, and in narrative relief scenes. Examples of Roman sculpture are abundantly preserved, in total contrast to Roman painting, which was very widely practiced but has almost all been lost. Latin and some Greek authors, particularly Pliny the Elder in Book 34 of his Natural History, describe statues, and a few of these descriptions match extant works. While a great deal of Roman sculpture survives more or less intact, it is often damaged or fragmentary.
