the final roman thing

the last thing ive got to say bout rome is their sweet mosaics. this is yet another area where the romans were very skilled. each little piece was 1 to 2 centimeters. some of the mosaics had 150 tiles per square centimeter. this villa in sicily had 7,000 sq ft of mosaic.

probly the last of the stuff on Rome

The Romans did this thing called Equestrian Statues and one of em was this statue called Marcus Aurelius which was the only equestrian bronze to survive in such a good condition, Michaelangelo even did a copy of it.


another cool thing thing that the romans did was the column of Trajan, which actually had trajan's ashes inside. it was covered with Bas relief, which is like flat statues ona wall, kinda like a coin. the whole column was covered with this bas relief and it was wrapped arounf it like a comic strip that recorded all of his conquests and victories.
 

the romans used paintings as well as awesome architecture. they put paintings in their homes as decoration, family portraits or fake landscapes. they used fresco painting to decorate rooms too,  a fresco is a painting in wet plaster.

yet some more stuff about rome

the romans were the best at tricking out all their cities because of how advanced they were for their time, for example....
the romans had this thing called the forum romanum which they used for political and religious center, like a town square or an ancient mall. their city planning skills also include paved roads, sewers, running water, and city squares.


the way that they got their running water was a marvel of engineering, the used AQUADUCTS- giant concrete structure that brought water from the mountains to the towns at an incline of a half inch per mile. aquaducts used the power of gravity to function. aquaducts are composed of archs and vaults. the romans were so smart that they knew that concrete contracted and expanded with the temp so they only worked on or made aquaducts between april 1st and november 1st. Rome had 77 aquaducts, thats like 350 million gallons.


This is a small little head with glass paste eyes, i dont have much info on him but i know that his name was agustas and i believe he was an emperor.


There is this statue in rome that used to be a guy sitting and it was 30 ft tall, but some thing happened to the body so now all weve got is his head and its called "constantine the great". Constantine was a roman emperor who made being a christian legal. the eyes of that statue are huge in proportion to the rest of the face because if you were looking up at it it would appear to be regular proportion, also the early christians believed that the eyes were a window into the soul. Constantines mom is responsibke for early catholic holy spots.

more roman stuff

the romans were pretty sophisticated in the art of taking baths, in fact they had giant swimming pool sized public baths in a place called a bath house where everyone got naked and bathed together. there were 3 different kinds of baths, the frigidarium- which was really cold, the tepidarium- room temp, and the caldarium- really hot. they would bath in all three of these in one trip to the bath house because they believed the shock that was administered to their bodies after the drastic temp change was really healthy. usually they seperated thye guys from the chics on the baths.
 

The arch of Constantine is another pretty awesome piece of roman architecture. it commemorates the victories and assumption of power of Constantine.

The Pantheon

The pantheon is atemple built by the romans to worship all the gods, because they picked up all the gods of those they conquered. Pan means all and theos is gods so you put the pieces together and you get the pantheon. the walls of the pantheon were 20 feet thick to support the gint dome on the top of the bulding. the floors are 144 feet in diameter and the dome ia also 144 feet from the floor and is thicker at the base. the ciecing is coffered, which means is got lost of boxes alll over it, and at the center of the dome ther is a 30 ft wide hole called the oculus, or eye. the pantheon has a gian front porch called the portico, the portico is corinthian. because of the oculus they had a drainage system in the floor incase it rained. the doors and dome were originally covered in gold, but the pantheon got pilfered.

The Colosseum

The Roman colosseum is a marvel of architecture and technology, this amazing piece of history is still standing today. The colosseum was a huge circular building used for mock naval battles (so it was water tight), killing christians, gladiator fights, that sort of thing. This beast of a building was 16 stories high, thats about 144ft tall. the walls were made of concrete, while the outside was covered with decrative plaster and marble. the colosseum had a capacity of 50,000 people. even though it didnt have a roof there was a giant canvas that could be pulled over the top called the velarium. it took about 1,000 men to hoist this thing into position over the colosseum. the colosseum is also filled with statues inside, they stood on niches and were very ornate, painted with glass eyes on some of them. it was built in standard roman sequence, which is the way all buldings were built back then. standard roman sequence is an order in which doric is on the bottom layer, then ionic, and the top would be corinthian. you needed a ticket to enter the colosseum, just like modern time football games or something. it was built over the rule of 3 different emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian.

ancient roman stuff

The roman people excelled in art and architecture, partially because they assimilated all the good stuff from all the people that they conquered; and they conquered a whole lot of people. They used archs, vaults, and concrete better than  ayone else.

here we see an image of a roman arch, an arch is a curved architectural element used to span an opening. The romans would have made this out of concrete.

this is an example of a roman vault, a vault is an arched roof or covering made of brick, stone, or concrete.

venus de milo

Also called amphrodite de milo, this sculpture was made around 130- 100 BC.
  discovered in 1820, this was believed to depict aphrodite, the greek goddess of love and beauty. made of marble and slightly larger than life at 203 cm 6ft 8 in high. Arms lost like many greek sculptures.

Amphora Exekias

an amphora is a jar with 2 handles that has pictures on it, This particular one was made by Exekias in about 530 BC.
  This depicts an image of Achilles and Ajax playing a game of morra. amphoras were black and then painted gold, later they were changed to be gold and painted with black paint.

parthenon

Another exelent example of greek architechture is the Parthenon, created about 448- 432 BC.

this is one of the best known buildings of the classical period. Located atop the acropolis in athens, this doric style temple was built and dedicated to the athinians patron goddess, Athena Parthanos. All in all  there are 70 thousand pieces, and even though it might seem to be perfectly straight, there are actually no straight lines. The stylabite is bowed and columns are wider near the bottom. each column is 33 ft tall and the main structure is 101 ft wide and 228 ft long. This is an extreemly advanced version of a post and lintel construction.  there was once a 40 ft statue of athena covered in gold inside. there is a recreation of the parthenon in nashville, TN. This detailed all greek ideals. During the peloponnesian war, where the greeks fought against sparta , the statue of athena had to be stripped of its gold to fund all the costs of the greek army.

The porch of the maidens

making the transition from sculptures to architechture, this is a great work of architecture called "the Porch of the Maidens". from around 421- 405 BC.


located on the erecthium, these large lady columns, called caryatids, are right beside the parthenon on the acropolis.

Nike of Camothrace

another piece from the hellenistic period is "nike of Camothrace", made around 200BC.
 Also called Winged Victory, Nike is the greek goddess of victory. in this sculpture she is landing on the bow of a ship, there is a recreation of this outside ceasars palace in las vegas. this piece itself is in the Louvre museum.

the dying gaul

Entering the Hellenistic period of sculptures, we have a sculpture known as "The Dying Gaul", made around 230-220 BC.

A Gaul is an old term for a Celtic warrior, these celtic warriors fought naked to show how ripped and strong they were, they also believed that all they needed to win was what nature gave them. This isnt the actual greek sculpture, its a Roman copy of a Greek bronze. The romans were pros at copying things exactly and extreemly precisely.

3 Goddesses

From the classical period comes a work of art known as "3 Goddesses", created about 435 BC.
 
These were once located on the east pediment, or triangular area at the top of the face of a classical building, of the Parthenon.They were a part of the frieze, which was all the sculptures on the pediment. They are a little bit larger than life, and to make this the models wpre wet clothes that hugged the body so that the sculpture could see everything better and show more detail. These goddesses are supposed to be commemorating the birth of Athena.

Kritos Boy

Another sculpture from the archaic period is a piece called "kritos boy", from around 480 BC.
 He is an example of contapposto, or counterpose. Contapposto is where the weight is shifted, its a more natural look where one knee is bent and one side of the hip is higher that the other.

greek art history

The greeks are famous for their awesome lookin statues and sculptures, im gonna show you a few of the ones that we still have to this day. Here is one of them called "Statue of a Youth".

He represents apollo or an idolizedd athlete. He is also a sculpture in the round, with an archaic smile. It was sculpted in the archaic period, and it has very heavy egyptian influence, as you can see by the arms at side witth one foot foward. something like this would have been a wealthy person's gravemarker.

 

Hello to those viewing this blog,
      I'd like to share a few of the things ive learned since i began this blog. One of the cool ancient pieces of art is this old mound of dirt that wraps around this grassy area called "the serpant mound", Another is this wierd pocket size godess of fertility carved from stone, its got no face and very large and fat lady parts. There are these huge cave paintings in France and they are pretty cool lookin too, they're called "The Lascaux caves" and the bulls are 16 feet long, each! The next ancient piece of art I learned about is pretty well known, Its called Stonehenge. It was an old site for druid rituals and what not, nobody knows how the stones got that way. There are also these really old pyramids in egypt called Ziggaurats, or step pyramids. One of the last things on the list was the Great Gallery, abunch of paintings on a wall. And finally we have a mamothh carved into a bone, most likely the bone belonged to the animal depicted in the picture. I hope this info was useful,                                                                          ,Garrett Connelly

Blog intro

Good evening people who may be reading this blog,
Over the course of this year im gonna be making a blog all about art and its history. Hopefully you enjoy what i discover and share with you.
looking foward to a good year