Introduction to Roman Sculpture

The latest research, about polychromy of Roman sculptures from all over the Mediterranean and of paintings, known as portraits of El Fayum, have confirmed our hypothesis about the pictorial procedures used in the Roman works of augustean era, necessary to achieve the sought naturalistic realism.

Roman sculpture has often given the impression that it provides such a precise simulacrum of the bodies of ancient Romans that their statues can be studied autoptically as if they were a patient.

This essay identifies a composite object in a Roman sculpture collection, noted for figures of Pan, as a model for Erasmus’s widely divulged emblem of Terminus, featured in images by major artists.

The gallery must have presented a design challenge, as one entrance to the room leads from the Roman gallery into the coin gallery on the east end of Gallery 212, and the two other doors, at the west end, provide a transit path that connects the Roman gallery to a hallway with Roman sculpture (fig.

A Roman sculpture of a nymph and satyr provides a rich case study for changing ethics of viewing and display, with regard to sexual imagery from the ancient past.