Roman&Christian

1. The Roman work that I will discuss will be the Column of Trajan. The column narrates the Dacian campaigns of both 102-103 and 105-106. There are over 2,500 figures linked because of the architecture and then of course the recurring figure of Trajan. I feel like this piece of architecture shows the personality of the roman culture, showing how they view Rome and how they view their opponents. The tower portrays how strong, efficient, and able the Roman’s army is while their enemies are, while worthy opponents, are not as good as them, obviously because if they had not defeated them they wouldn’t have this column. One thing I’ve noticed personally from Roman art is that it depicts successful leaders and never shows anything that might even give the idea of a failure.

2. The Christian work that I will discuss is the Virgin of Vladimir. I chose this piece because it depicts the feeling of the time, at least for me. The feeling I get is that the Christians are looking for something solid to base their faith in, something that will show love for them because the rulers and culture around them can’t. The colors are much brighter than other pictures I’ve seen of portraits, possibly because its been remade a few times. I chose this painting because I feel like it shows the shift that the world is taking, that people are starting to thing more about the spiritually than about the political.

3. A similarity that I see in both of the traditions is the architecture. Both cultures focus heavily on the buildings they create to show their generation and their future generations what is important to them and what they believe in. Both cultures built their buildings for things that were important, like battles won, or religious stories told. A difference is in the amount of portraits that I’ve seen. There are many busts and sculptures in the Roman tradition while in the Christian culture there are paintings and elaborately creating paintings on the walls and ceilings of the buildings. Just like in the pieces I chose, the painting from the Christian time is more personal while the column in the Roman times is about a countries battle led by Trajan.