Public Sculpture and Social Practice in the Roman Republic

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the production, function, and social use of public sculpture during the Roman Republic (509–27 bce). After an historical introduction, it focuses on the active interaction of plastic arts with the viewer and the different levels of meaning and understanding, surveying the types, subjects, and materials and the intent (honorary, commemorative, votive, funerary, or cult images) of republican sculpture. The state-regulated management of statues in public places—mainly honorary portraiture, which spread from the fourth century bce onward—is also discussed. Space is devoted to the viewing and reception of a portrait, which was a system of visual and material signs. Besides, statues “functioned” in a specific topographical setting. The chapter then discusses the urban scenography for statues along the triumphal route in Rome; the impact of the new Greece-oriented artistic tendencies in marble sculpture and acrolithic cult statues with respect to the conservative perception of the traditional terracotta plastic; and the ideological and religious meaning of the temple coroplastic art, which followed the spread of sacred buildings constructed both in Rome and in Italy.