Roman political art: Hieratic Style

(ca. 250-400 A.D.)

Chronologically organized

	1. Marble bust of a man of Aquileia, 3rd c. A.D. (Aquileia, Mus. Naz.) 0.27 m. tall. The Hieratic style, which slowly evolves in the course of the third century, was the official, or political, style of the Later Roman Empire. At the expense of third-century expressionism, it recovered the classical focus on surfaces, no longer to express organic life or even inner feeling, but the power of a supernatural cosmic dynamo. As seen here, the head becomes massive and inorganic. Inorganic stylizations shift attention from the natural man, as supernatural power shapes the outer forms directly. Mouth and nose form a triangle superimposed on a circle which convey a sense of an anticipation of that power.
	2. Bronze portrait bust of Tribonian, from a statue, 251-53 A.D. (New York: Metropolitan). 0.25 m. tall. Here is a study in inorganic massive volumes; stiffness, a frozen gaze contemplating infinity. This aesthetic is associated with the recovery of the Empire from the Third Century Crisis; no longer on the basis of municipal vitality and social discipline, but from the enormous power of the rural aristocracy, in dangerous tension with a military imperial office bloated with the cosmic energy needed to address the Empire's pressing needs. Supernatural energy, mediated by the state, becomes a catalyst for emerging private power that ultimately contradicted the state.
	3. Marble portrait bust of Gallienus in the House of the Vestals 260-68 A.D. (Rome: Mus. Naz.) 0.38 m. tall. In aesthetic terms, this tension was between a neo-classicism favored by the rural "senators" and a link to supernatural power favored by Late Roman emperors. An exception was the Gallienic Renaissance associated with the effort of senators to seize the imperial office back from the army. The smooth formalistic surfaces of this this portrait recalls classicism, but the mass is a bit inorganic, the eyes turned to heaven.
	4. This may be the portrait bust of Numerian, in which case it would date from about 282-83 A.D. The hieratic style, marked by inorganic masses linked to supernatural forces, also incorporated some eastern influences, some expressivist techniques, and some neo-classicism. The hairdo is exotic; the eyebrow classical, and the eyes expressive. But on the whole this imperial bust reflects a hieratic dehumanized inorganic treatment of forms which express a rigid expectation of outside magical intervention.
	5. Marble head, originally from a collosal statue of Diocletian in Nicomedia, 285-305 A.D. (Constantinople: Archeol. Museum). 29 cm. high. The hieratic style lent itself to collosal statues bloated by supernatural energy, such as the one from which this head is derives. While the wide brow, symmetry and dead-pan look recall classical tastes, the turning inward of the shadow area between the eyes reflects a certain inner intensity, and the wrinkles leading down from the nose are entirely unnatural and not clearly related to inner life. As for an exotic element, this is the first western use of the diadem, which marks the ruler as a mediating, priest-like figure.
	6. Statue of the Tetrarchs on the corner of Saint Mark's, Venice, ca. 300 A.D. No longer able to subsume private interests under a political order, Rome was compelled to respond to complex circumstances while maintaining the fiction of the political unity that was the basis of its fortuna. Diocletian's answer to set up four co-rulers, called Tetrarchs, whose diversity was responsive to different frontier exigencies, while supernatually being one. Porphyry was popular because of its appeal to the senses.
	7. Another picture of the same group of rulers.
	8. Statue of Diocletian and Maximian (or their successors), 4th c. A.D. The cloning of inorganic masses, emphasized by the embrace, subsumes diversity under a supernatural order; increasingly difficult as Rome's contradictions deepened.
	9. Portrait bust of a man from Bardo, ca. 300 A.D. (Bardo: Museum). Although some classical elements are still here (eyebrows, noseline, broad brow, some expressiveness), the inorganic massiveness and spiritually expressive eyes mark this as hieratic in style.
	10. Gold medallion showing Constantine Chlorus being welcomed by London on her knees, ca. 306 A.D. (Trier: Landesmuseum). Medallions, which were in effect bribes in gold to win the support of military commanders, are the origin of military medals. The gold ultimately came from the senatorial order, and when senators no longer saw any point is bribing distant troops, the military was forced to take measures into its own hands to preserve the Roman order on which it depended. Having the same propaganda function as collosal busts, this medallion reflects the hieratic court tastes at Trier.
	11. Mosaic, showing the Aureus of the Tetrarch Maximin Daia, 311-313 A.D. Alexandria. (Paris: Bib. Nat.) The apotheosis in a quadriga theme is associated with the hieratic style. While there are some Graeco-Roman classical elements here, such as the nudes, there is also a very unnatural taste for symbolism: the nimbus, which is a glow surrounding a person mediating cosmic energy, was later picked up by Christian saints. We also see a formal indifference to naturalism in the hieratic inorganic, frontal, stiff pose.
	12. Porphery portrait bust of Licinius (?), early 4th c. A.D. (Cairo: Museum). Following Diocletian's death in 305 A.D., his experiment of a Tetrarchy collapsed in confusion. The outcome was the victory of naked unitary military power, for merely a mystical unity mediating cosmic energy did not suffice to resolve real problems. Licinius and Constantine ended being rivals for that power.
	13. Marble collosal head from statue of Constantine, 312-315 A.D. (Rome: Basilica Max.) 2.60 m. tall. Constantine consolidated all power in his own hands and ruled until 337 A.D. Here he is the super-priest who mediates energy surging from the cosmic dynamo, whether that dynamo be named Sol Invictus or the Christian God.
	14. Bronze collosal head of Constantine, 330-340 A.D. (Rome: Pal. dei Conserv.) 1.5 m. tall. Originally part of a seated statue. The hieratic style reached its apogee at the time of Constantine, to end an empty formula, traped by the ideological contradictions which are apparent here in aesthetic terms. After this, the aesthetic ceases to develop and eventually gives way to the Theodosian style.
	15. Arch of Constantine I in Rome, and to the right, the Coloseum. With the recovery of political order under the Tetrarchs and then Constantine, there was a sense of having restored Rome's former glory, which might account for the element of "Constantinian classicism" in the Hieratic Style. Constantine's arch imitates the earlier arch of Septimius, the African savior of Rome, and in fact incorporates reliefs from that earlier arch (called "remplois") into itself.
	16. Relief from the Arch of Constantine. The emperor gives the order for the distribution of booty, for with the failure of civic ideology, an appeal to private interest and a common subjection to god became the cement of the Empire. Hieratic features seen here: abstract composition with symmetrically arranged repititious figures flanking the frontal central figure who mediates cosmic energy; deeply drilled furrows of drapery create a chiaroscuro and geometricize the surface; and awkward and heavy poses.
	17. Relief from Arch of Constantine I. The large heads hands may here be an Italo-Roman plebean trait. The council of imperial advisors in the Late Empire were called the "consistory" because it "sat around" passively, rather than take an active part in governance.
	18. Portrait bust of Dogmatus, d. 377 (Rome: Lateran). This bust was made in 323-337 A.D. It gets close to becomming an empty formula.
	19. The consul Iunius Bassus among circus factions in marble marquetry, 331-350 A.D. (Rome: Basilica of Iunius Bassus). The senatorial aristocracy's power, resting on their vaste rural estates, enabled them to address local problems, but coopted central authority. In the new Constantinian political order, this local power tended to isolate and marginalize the aristocracy, and so they tried to build solidarity by developing a cultivated correspondence that bordered on conspiracy by recalling the days of senatorial independence, and they rallied behind their natural political leader, one or another consul. Indeed, the consul imitated the emperor's hieratic mediating function for the army and officialdom, by representing himself as mediator for the senatorial aristocracy. Associated with this was a blossoming of private (non-monumental) art forms. The ceremonial high point of a consul's career was to initiate the games, and here Iunius Bassus actually participates. Many hieratic features are here: the frontal stiffness, reduction of plastic values to flat pattern, centralized composition, expressive facial features, gesture and color.
	20. Marble marquetry showing a tiger attacking a bull, ca. 331 A.D. (Rome: Basilica of Junius Bassus, Palazzo dei Conserv.) A brilliant synthesis of influences. The frontal tiger is expressive; more so than the bull. The black stripes and white-"talon" motif used throughout are very effective. The tiger here almost priestly, engaged in some terrible sacrificial rite, but not personally involved.
	21. Ivory leaf from the Lampadii diptych. The consul and his family open the games in the Hippodrome in Constantinople, ca. 355 A.D. (Brescia: Mus. Crist.) Constantine cloned Rome by building Constantinople (today Instanbul), a city that controlled access to the Black Sea and ideally located to serve as the political center of the eastern, Greek-speaking, half of the Empire. As private capacities emerge, linguistic differences purcolate to the surface to become politically divisive. Like the Tetrarchy, the aim was to adapt political initiative to local requirement while maintaining the fiction of a mystical unity. The ivory consular diptych became a major art form in Late Rome.