ArLT Summer School 2007
Why Romans Look Ugly
(cariatures in Roman art and literature)
Dr Nigel Spivey, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
22nd July 2007
Note: The lecture was illustrated with many pictures. This brief report cannot therefore do it anything like justice.
This study was occasioned by the TV series 'hyperbolically entitled "How Art Made the World."' This was produced by a man who had worked on a Horizon series popularising science, and was keen to do the same for art; he wanted to include the 'white coat' factor, showing what light science could throw on art.
When human beings began to make images of the human appearance, about 30,000 years before the present, there were parallels with Roman portraiture.
Scholars who wish to show the distinctive Roman contribution to portraiture speak of 'veristic' portraits, using the term
verismo that is otherwise used only of Puccini and similar operatic composers.
At the same time these scholars have to acknowledge that the carvings are not entirely true to life.
The earliest known representations of the human face come from the Pyrenees. Skulls show that the people who drew these looked just like us. Yet, drawn on pieces of tile, for an unknown purpose, these representations are definitely caricatures, showing long noses and adding expressive touches to faces.
Caricature is the identification of what makes an individual face different from the crowd, and the exaggeration of that feature. Both prehistoric and Roman faces exhibit caricature.
Scientific experiments have established that we remember (or at least recognise) people's faces in caricature form, with exaggeration of between 4 and 16 per cent.
One Roman portrait was described as of an 'old, boorish leather-faced patrician.' Why should a prominent person wish to be remembered in this way?
Prof. Connelly in a recent book on priestesses discusses a bust of an aged woman and refuses to believe that it could be 4th century Athenian work showing Lysimache, a notoriously long-lived priestess, as the inscription claims, because it is not idealised. It must, she thinks, be Roman work.
Delos was the first Roman settlement in the Aegean, and a centre of slave trading, and a number of statues, probably of successful slave traders, have been found there. These include one dubbed the pseudo-athlete and dismissed as 'pure kitsch.' It shows a veristic head on an athlete's body.
Oxford Professor Birt Smith comments that "we cannot believe there were no pleasant-looking Romans." His suggested explanation for the non-idealised portraits in Delos is that the Greek sculptors commissioned to make the portraits so hated the Romans that they made them look ugly.
It is hard to believe that the Roman patrons would have accepted the works if they were not to their taste. (Velasquez's portraits of the Spanish Hapsburgs do show them as monsters. Perhaps the royal family thought everyone else looked weird and only they looked normal!)
Other explanations offered are:
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Imagines maiorum were taken from death-masks, kept in the atrium and displayed on anniversaries. The problem with this is that rigor mortis removes the age-lines, sunken cheeks and drooping jowls.
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The bereaved wanted portraits on tombstones to be as real as possible, so that they could feel that the departed was with them. Hopkins: "To ensure the social survival of the dead in the world of the living."
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The Romans were imitating the Etruscan custom of showing the deceased at a banquet, in less than perfect physical shape e.g. with very fat stomach. The Etruscans knew Greek sculpture but deliberately went down a different route. The problem is that the Romans show no signs of admiring the Etruscans.
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Roman sculptures show men who are not only old but also unhappy or in pain. Perhaps they show how a Stoic (vir fortis et sapiens) would like to look after a lifetime of bearing all that life threw at him.
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The Client-Patron relationship required the Patron to be clearly older and more authoritative than his Clients.
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The Cursus Honorum allowed only men aged at least 42 to be Consul - and this at a time when life expectancy was 45. It was sometimes to a man's advantage to appear older than he was.
None of these by itself is a sufficient explanation.
The Romans understood what makes a good portrait, and this includes an element of caricature. Caricature need not be used only in ridicule. Just as we remember a face with its distinctive features exaggerated, so the Roman wished to be remembered with a portrait that slightly emphasised what made him special and individual.
Written evidence
Cicero contasts Greek prosopon with Latin voltus (vultus). Prosopon is a mere outward appearance, while voltus is what shows the true person.
Voltus indicat mores. A candidate for office must remain accessible
vultu ac fronte.
Inscriptions e.g. vultus solacium praestat.
Discussion how far you can judge a man by his vultus. Sometimes a person is not
similis sui i.e. his face misleads.
Augustus presenting young Tiberius to the Senate says his unpromising looks are
naturae ... non animi.
Sallust says ambitious people seek a vultus bonus rather than an ingenium bonum.
Cicero attacking Calpurnius Piso asks the judges not to be misled by his imposing countenance. But in his rhetorical works Cicero stresses the importance of producing appropriate facial expressions, and of attacking the appearance of opponents.
Ad Herennium, discussing artificial memory, says that we remember the bizarre and unusual. So it would be natural for a person to seek to be remembered by having some traits exaggerated.
Diodorus Siculus describing an aristocratic funeral writes of actors who mimic the peculiarities of the deceased.
Greek and Roman portraits
Greek busts of Themistocles and Socrates show a traditional view of these people rather than accurate portraits. But they are not idealised. The doryphorus gives ideal proportions, and was very widely known and copied.
Augustus controlled his portraits for propaganda, and favoured idealised images, whereas Galba wanted to impress people with his age and experience, and with the fact that he was not like Nero.
Coin portraits being small need to individualise the ruler by caricature.
Matisse said "This portrait looks more like you and than you do."
