Coda

Abstract

What is the significance of Roman painting for the history of Western art? When I published a book on Roman art several years ago, friends of mine – philosophers like myself, but also historians of art – asked me: ‘Why should a philosopher be interested in Roman art?’. It appeared strange to them. They would have probably sympathized if I had written a book on the art of classical Greece, because it would have corresponded with the Golden Age of Philosophy, or on painting during the Italian Renaissance, because of the revival of rhetoric at that time. But why Roman art? Did the Romans add anything significant to the contributions of the Greeks, either in philosophy or in art, where, as Winckelmann suggested, the Romans only continued the baroquization that began during the Hellenistic period, without great originality? My contribution here is meant to respond to and to undermine the long chain of prejudice against Roman art, and especially against Roman painting, by offering a new, consistent and systematic interpretation of Roman painting, and in particular the usual four styles, spanning from c. 200 bc to c. ad 100. In contrast to traditional and current views, I want to suggest that Roman painting occupies a unique role in the history of art. With the exception of a few Etruscan funerary decorations, it represents the first surviving body of a wide range of painting in the Western tradition, and furthermore the only major non-Christian corpus before the Christian era, which has an unequalled variety of themes and styles, alongside the complexity of its symbolism.