Roman art includes sculpture, painting, architecture, and mosaics, as well as luxury glassware, gem engravings, metalwork, and ivory carvings. Roman artists were highly creative, often borrowing artistic styles from various cultures, including Greek, Etruscan, Native Italic, and Egyptian.
Sculpture and figure painting were considered the highest forms of art by the Romans, but unfortunately, although a large number of sculptures have survived to the present, very few paintings have survived. The best-known and most important paintings that have survived are the wall paintings from Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other nearby sites. These paintings show how wealthy residents of a seaside resort decorated their villas in the period before Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, which decimated these areas. A large number of paintings from the 3rd century AD Roman catacombs have also survived. C., parts of painted rooms in Rome and elsewhere, and Fayum mummy portraits of Roman Egypt (before AD 200, the subjects of the catacomb paintings were pagan in nature, but after that, the Christian themes were mixed with pagan themes).
Roman painters used a variety of subjects, including portraits, mythological subjects, animals, still lifes, and scenes from everyday life. During the Hellenistic period, scenes from the field were common. These scenes included rural mountain landscapes, shepherds with their flocks, country houses, and rustic temples. Also, erotic scenes were quite common.
Roman sculpture was heavily inspired by both the Greeks and the Etruscans. As a result of the Roman conquests of Greek territory, many Greek sculptors were enslaved by the Romans and it was reported that, in the 2nd century BC. C., most of the sculptors who worked in Rome were Greek. Due to the large number of Greek statues that were imported to Rome and the large number of Greek sculptors who worked there (and presumably using their Greek training and experience to produce their works), it has been very difficult to identify which of the surviving sculptures. They were of Greek design and were uniquely Roman in design (even Roman temples were often decorated with repurposed Greek statues).
The Romans did not attempt to compete with the magnificent independent Greek statuary. Instead, they produced historical works in relief. The most famous works of this type are the great Roman triumphal columns, which were made with continuous narrative reliefs that screwed them together (the commemorative columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius still survive in Rome).
All forms of fancy small sculpture (often of very high quality) were very popular, as well as molded relief decoration of ceramic vessels and small figurines.
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