Trajan\'s Column V Adamklissi

[tlclark]

The column, on the other hand, is also very detailed - more so, in fact - but the details are often wrong The details are also often right, as far as we know, but if a bridge was constructed the way it is (very graphically) portrayed on the column it would fall down - if turfs were laid into a rampart like that they would slump into a muddy heap before the first Dacian foot was planted upon it. These are not just errors caused by the demands of narrative or the shortcuts of artistic economy - they are clear examples of the artists getting it wrong.

First, sorry about the link, I have looked into it and I can't figure out why that folder is forbidden when I just changed the permissions. I will try to see if I can get it fixed.

On other matters I think that the above statement is purely subjective. I think that within the bounds of Roman artistic convention the column is surprisingly accurate. The bridges and earthworks are certainly not so inaccurately rendered as to justify the statement tha they 'would fall down'. That's a purely subjective statement, as subjective as suggesting that they got the scale wrong because the walls of Roman fortifications are not 4 ft tall or that legionnaires were not 40 ft tall.

The particulars about the sod is something I don't know about so I can't say on that issue but I disagree with the idea that the artist's got some things 'wrong'. Rather it is an issue of focus and convention. Within the convention and context of the time, the column reads very well, and by well, I mean accurate to the times.

Perhaps the Adamklissi monument reads well too, but the style makes the issue difficult (though I seem to be the odd man out on this issue)

Clearly, however, the Roman public and the commissioners of the column either didn't know or didn't care! (and the remarks on the purpose of the column are very pertinent here - it wasn't intended to help military historians of the future, clearly!)

That's the truth!

Local or provincial styles were more than acceptable at Adamklissi, even for an official monument. Local style at Adamklissi may not have been just 'acceptable' - as in that was all they could muster - but actually preferable, as a demonstration of dominion over the locals.

It demonstrates exactly why dependence on art as a source text is SOOOO difficult.

Aye, point taken there. I'm still not convinced by the idea that the artists must have been Dacians - it seems like a default option. Are there examples of Dacian relief sculpture that resemble the metopes?

That's the point. There is little to no monumental sculpture in a lot of these provincial cultures prior to the Roman arrival. Also recognize that the Adamklissi and TC are made anywhere from within a generation of the campaigns to a generation after the campaigns. What is the cultural milieu of someone living in a conquered territory for 20 plus years? Is he Roman, Dacian? Romano-Dacian? What art would he have seen or would not have seen? So it's entirely subjective, but here my personal read on this.

The genre scenes we know from all over the empire are the product of people within the classical context. It may be primitive (something that I think is more often the product of intention rather than haste or lack of skill, but that's another matter, for example it's natural to make the most important people bigger, or to accentuate features that make them more readible. Caricature is more natural in many ways to art, than portriature).

There is a convention to these forms that get repeated, and those are fairly steady, even as they are rendered rather stylistically in the provinces. Looking at the Adamklissi monument, especially in things such as drapery and the human form, this is an artist completely unfamiliar with the classical conventions. It is not a local variation of a domestic style, it is an attempt at an adaptation of a style inheritly foreign to it.

If not, you're consigning them to a hazy realm of mystery.

That's a little hyperbolic I think. I think rather, what we are saying is that we don't know where they are coming from. The best guess is local, but it's only a guess. But hey, who says we can't guess? But the guess is an educated one, and I think, a good one, but hey it's a guess.

That's why I'm an art historian instead of a rocket scientist, I'm allowed to make guesses. :wink:

There is no 'background' to any of them, of course - the pictures exist in a hazy shallow pictorial space: on the grave pictures, this is the non-space of Elysium, where the soldier is free to engage in his favourite activities (feasting, riding down the enemy etc) - in effect, might the pictures from Adamklissi be intended in a similar way?

We are looking at different features I think. The filled frame and shallow pictorial plane certainly are feature of genre. All are present on items such as the relief of the Haterii all the way up to the arch of the argentarii. By the time of the decannalia reliefs the wings of Nike are little more than incised lines made with a running drill. All sculptural depth disappears entirely. By the time we reach the severan period all of those features you mention are common place, yet I could still tell a severan relief from adamklissi relief at a hundred paces. For example, the frontal eye even when in profile, the treatment of drapery as a pattern. All of this is very very different. My suspicion is that this is a group of local artists trying to deal with Roman subject matter in their native style.

Now HERE's an interesting thought. If that's the case, that means that they are unburdened by holding to classical conventions. Think about it this way. An artist in Rome can not make a truly accurate representation of armor because he is working from 100+ years of artistic conventional shorthand that he was already used to. If a dacian artist has no such conventions, what does he use as a model? Wouldn't he need to go to the originals? In this way you could have local artists BUT, still have more accurate representations (in the details at least) since the Romans are shackled by realistic stock conventions. A Roman artist could no more ignore his conventions than an impressionist could paint in a neoclassical style, or vice versa.

I don't believe that of course - since I don't believe that the Roman artist had any big hang-ups over things like 'convention' since they were utter pragmatists, - but I thought I might bring it up just to throw another monkey wrench in the works.

is it too fanciful to imagine that the representations of soldiers on the later victory monument are intended as similar commemoration of the dead - carved by the soldiers themselves, in demotic military style, to honour their fallen comrades?

Well that's a cool idea but unfortunately that's outside my ability to say. I can't mind-read the artists or patrons. That's hard enough when we have excellent contexts in the heart of the empire.

Travis

PS -

I can't get the permissions for the Antonine Pius folder straightened out.
Try these links:

http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius1.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius2.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius3.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius4.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius5.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius6.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius7.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius8.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictures/ant_pius9.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictur ... pius10.jpg