sculpture, Roman
sculpture, RomanRoman sculpture was produced in a variety of materials (bronze, marble, other stones, precious metals, terracotta) but it is marble that is seen as typically Roman because so much that survives is in this medium. Sculpture was used for commemorative purposes (for display in public and in private contexts, especially the tomb), for state propaganda, in religious settings, and for decorative purposes, and various different forms were developed: statues and busts, relief friezes and panels, and architectural embellishments.
Early sculpture in Rome (e.g. the bronze she-wolf of c.500 BC) was heavily influenced by Etruscan work, and Etruscan sculptors would appear to have worked in Rome in the regal period and the early republic. Rome's contacts with the Greek world, at first with the colonies of southern Italy and later through wars of conquest in Greece and Asia Minor, resulted in a...
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