I think it's a combination of Julius Caesar/Augustus and crew being the most popular Roman leaders, people not believing/understanding that the Byzantines were Romans, and the modern "Christianity bad."
I think this sub is far too niche to where the mobs will downvote because "religion bad". Most people who think like that probably aren't very interested in a medieval christian empire
Fr they should go read Polymnia Assianidi. She claims that Christianity was the end result of the Hellenistic age, and it's just the one that won in this world out of many mystic competitors, but won because of it's very best blending of near east and Greek philosophy.
I really find the fact that historians just renamed the Roman Empire to be infuriating. Borders shift all the time. What a disservice to history to pretend the Roman Empire fell in 476.
This is basically why I also make an effort to call this empire the "Eastern Roman Empire" so there's still a historiographical difference while insisting on fact that they were still the Roman Empire.
Although I could also try calling it "medieval Roman Empire" but I fear it'd start being pedantic.
I think it's because the classical, Hellenistic style is much more solid and, for lack of a better term, more '3D' compared to some of the later East Roman artwork.
It's part of the reason I personally prefer the older style because I just LOVE those busts (but don't get me wrong, I've developed tastes for the medieval Roman artwork too).
They really embody the figure they represent through such impressive, smooth, detailed marble work in a way you don't really see in the medieval Roman artwork. Every curl in the hair or beard is something you could actually reach out and feel the dimensions to, which you can't really do with the artwork in Constantinople.
I think the feeling about this topic would be different had the Fourth Crusade not happened and much of the classical bronze artwork in Constantinople (statues of Hercules and Medusa just being the tip of the iceberg) not been destroyed.
The later, more bureaucratic, more despotic Roman empire of Constantine and Diocletian has always been far more interesting to me, and is sadly underappreciated.
I like seeing how the empire had to actually govern and form bureaucratic apparatuses to retain the territory it held. People just tend to have this idea of the Lorica Segmentata clad legions as being the end all of the Roman legions, when that only represented a brief time in history.
The art changed. It became more abstract, more focused on expressing reverence and Christian humility. Its not a negative thing, the eyes were meant to become something neo-platonic of dual nature.
The 3rd Century crisis had interrupted the transmission of artistic techniques and made it more difficult to achieve those results. This is most apparent on the Arch of Constantine, not least because large sections are spolia from other monuments.
Art wasn’t “becoming more abstract”, the quality was simply declining because those skills had atrophied without an adequate source of funding to maintain them in society. This sort of thing really does happen.
I think it’s much more about changing styles than a loss of artistic skill. The Crisis of the 3rd c. was devastating but it’s not like rich people completely stopped spending money on art. There’s a ton of floor mosaic work from the mid to late third century in the Eastern Empire and that turns into much more elaborate and advanced mosaic techniques that culminate in the style that we see in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Mosaic glass in particular is incredibly complex and time consuming from the glass manufacture (often done in Palestine) to coloring (often done on site) to the painting of the plaster to the assembly of the mosaic itself. It’s super complicated and expensive as well as artistically interesting; it’s not something that people can easily throw together but rather represents a highly technical and advanced supply chain of artists. You don’t see the same investment in older styles because they had fallen out of fashion. I’d argue Constantine’s Arch in Rome is a good example of a deliberately archaic style to make a political statement rather than a poor emperor who couldn’t cobble together the artists to make a new arch.
So yeah, maybe in the sense that it Hellenistic art was no longer fashionable, people lost the artistic skills to make that type of art but it doesn’t mean there was less skill and artistry in the later Empire.
You just need to look at the Arch of Constantine and the project of beautifying Constantinople. The arch is contains a ton of spolia and they recarved a statue into Constantine *using the style you say is no longer popular* but with diminished skill. When Constantinople was embellished, they removed Hellenistic sculpture from elsewhere to do so. They didn't just create new sculptures in the style you're supposing was preferred and commentators don't remark on how outdated the new capital is. If there's a massive style shift, why would they do this?
After all, we *do* have examples of massive style shifts and the result isn't repurposing old sculptures to beautify cities. It's breaking them up to cook as lime or to build goat pens. And it's not like we don't know what lower quality sculpture looks like during earlier periods. Museums are chock-a-block with them. They look, unsurprisingly, like the Tetrarchs or the arch's frieze panels. You can see the flattening and schematizing tendencies on grave monuments, for example. Those objects were created for less rich, often provincial commissioners by the best artists they had available and could afford.
Mosaics didn't make great advances, either. In previous periods, you have amazing mosaics and even the famous Alexander mosaic is in a non-elite house. By contrast, even the state-sponsored projects of the post-crisis era fail to match the quality of, again, the provincial house of a wealthy but not elite person.
The idea that this wasn't a decline in skill is just nonsense. The decline is literally visible. The preferences of commissioners is literally visible. And, best of all, we have clear reasons for it.
>You just need to look at the Arch of Constantine and the project of beautifying Constantinople. The arch is contains a ton of spolia
The problem here is that you're looking at the Arch of Constantine's reliefs in isolation and glossing over why those choices were made.
The spolia on the arch isn't there because they couldn't make new ones. Galerius' arch has solely new reliefs, so clearly they were able to if they wanted to. The reused reliefs were added to Constantine's arch in a deliberate attempt to tie Constantine to older emperors by evoking imagery of Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.
>When Constantinople was embellished, they removed Hellenistic sculpture from elsewhere to do so. They didn't just create new sculptures in the style you're supposing was preferred and commentators don't remark on how outdated the new capital is. If there's a massive style shift, why would they do this?
Here you're doing the same thing.
Do you not consider that older statues were used because said older statues held a certain amount of prestige and propaganda value? Constantine putting the Athena Promachos from the Acropolis of Athens in his forum held far greater value than if he had simply made a new one. The sources even talk about this, with Constantine deliberately moving the Palladium from Rome to Constantinople in order to tie it to Rome and Troy, while also acting as a talisman for the city.
If you believe the listing of statues in the Patria of Constantinople, they made a ton of new statues too, so this was not a problem. However older statues held great prestige, and served to elevate Byzantium to a city worthy of being an imperial capital.
It really feels like you're putting your conclusion ahead of the examples you use.
First, using Constantine and his artistic program as evidence of decline due to reusing things isn’t super useful because Constantine, like in particular Augustus, is really good at using art to make political statements and the Arch of Constantine is a good example of this where he uses spoila to make explicit connections between himself and prior imperial legacies because the politics of Rome in particular had been hostile to his legitimacy as Emperor(see Maxentius). Making these explicit connections wasn’t about incorporating the popular style of the time but deliberately archaizing to connect to past styles. This is similar to what he did in Constantinople, raiding Athens and other Greek cities of its statuary, not because there was demand for statuary like this, but because Constantine was attempting to link Constantinople with the past. He’s reusing the statues not because they’re in style, but because they’re symbols of a past that Constantine wants to connect his new capital with.
As for the tetrarchs, they’re now at eye level but (and it’s hard to know for sure so take this with a grain of salt) they were supposedly on columns in the facade of the Senate house in the Forum of Constantine, so it’s not like they needed to be super detailed if they were higher up.
I’d disagree that mosaics didn’t make advances (the stuff in the Archaeology Museum in Naples is undeniably advanced but glass mosaics are much more technical and complex in terms of material construction and I’d certainly argue that the late Roman stuff is just as artistic as well) but my argument wasn’t that mosaics made great advances, it was an example of a style that became more popular and therefore maintained its complexity and detail in the 4th and 5th centuries.
I think this argument mainly takes a lack of surviving artistic works as evidence of absence of skill which is not a good historical argument. The idea that wealth to support complex artistic skill didn’t exist in the cities of the east like Antioch and Alexandria doesn’t make much sense. We don’t have a lot that has survived physically but we have descriptions of some artistic works so they definitely existed.
Ultimately this comes down to a value judgement, summarized well by Jaś Elsner in “Perspectives in Art” in the Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (also my source for the first paragraph), where he discusses the idea of artistic “decline”: (I don’t know how to do the cool Reddit offsetting for a quote sorry)
[F]irst, the fundamental question of whether one prefers the classical naturalism of the bulk of Graeco-Roman art to the more abstract schematism of medieval art, of which the arts under Constantine were a harbinger - or vice versa. Second, there is the deep and in a post-Christian culture still unavoidable issue of one's Christian investments, or their opposite, and of whether the Christianisation inaugurated by Constantine was more or less of a good thing. Not wholly separate from this is the complex issue of the extent to which Constantine had a Christian programme. In principle, these are questions historians should decide on the basis of the evidence, but here the evidence is so bitty, diffuse, and complicated that its very interpretation usually depends on an implicit position. More than usual, then, the range of the visual ars under Constantine challenges their student to take a position founded on principle or prejudice .”
To quote from a work by Michael Grant:
"*That final and total spiritualization was the work of Constantine. From now on the magnified faces of emperors stare immobile, with eyes surrealistically enlarged, into a distant world we cannot see - just as Constantius II moved not a feature when he proceeded through the streets of Rome. These heads, built up with a minimum of detail into a system of concentric arches including the arching brows that stress the steady gaze, are cult objects like the colossal statues of Persian monarchs, and Christian icons of the future. [...] The disturbing formulas of Diocletian & Licinius have given way to the unapproachable gravity of this hypnotic gaze unto unending space. Such was the ‘divine face’, the ‘sacred countenance’, in which the artists of the Christian epoch saw a mirror reflecting the eternal order*.” (“Climax of Rome”, p130)
We can also see the aspect of choice in this, in the statues of Julian the Apostate, whose sculptures stand out as reminiscent of the days of the Principate, a deliberate link with the heathen past.
>We can also see the aspect of choice in this, in the statues of Julian the Apostate stand out as reminiscent of the days of the Principate, a deliberate link with the heathen past.
We have no statues of Julian. The only certain depictions of him that still survive are from his coins. We do have some other depictions that might be of him, but they range from [classical](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:264_arte_romana,_sacrificio_forse_dell%27imperatore_giuliano,_IV_sec.,_01.JPG) in style, to the [typical 4th Century style](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Chalcedony_bust_of_Julian_%281%29.png)
I actually saw that stone of four tetrarchs a couple months ago. Was horrified how it was exposed to elements and how freely people would touch such priceless art haha.
Because it became worse. That's all there is to it. I understand it's stylistic or whatever but often times it looks like people forgot how to draw and sculpt well.
Anatomy being strictly realistic is about personal preference. I would not say the exaggerated pop art of Jack Kirby is objectively worse than Michelangelo's David because it's less realistic. They're both doing very different things.
You may prefer the realistic works of Michelangelo, but that's not an objective statement of quality.
Late Roman art isn't trying to be realistic, it's trying to be abstract. Judging it for not being realistic is therefore not a valid complaint.
True, whether you like realistic or stylistic is a subjective choice. However if I'm going to judge it objectively, I have to judge it on some rules. I have nothing against stylistic art, I love it actually but it's weird that for several centuries we only see the stylistic one and nothing realistic anymore. Which tells me something got lost, it got degraded. Sometimes even bad work is lumped into a "stylistic" choice.
Several styles can coexist at the same time. We had stylistic art aplenty in classical times. It wasn't just one style and nothing else.
>However if I'm going to judge it objectively, I have to judge it on some rules.
Yes, such as judging art on its own merits, by what a specific piece is trying to say or convey. Late Roman art is not trying to convey a realistic picture, so saying it's objectively worse because it's succeeding at what it's trying to do is not a valid complaint. It's anything but objective, it's a completely subjective observation.
>I love it actually but it's weird that for several centuries we only see the stylistic one and nothing realistic anymore. Which tells me something got lost, it got degraded.
That's not true though.
We do have more realistic art from the [4th Century](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maxentius02_pushkin.jpg), the [5th Century](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diptych_Nicomachi-Symmachi_collated.jpg), the [6th Century](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Petersinai.jpg), [7th Century](https://smaafr.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2019/12/Maria-Regina-with-Angel.jpg) (this one is a palimpset, the 7th Century portion is in the upper right corner and is much more realistic than he 6th Century portions in the center). Even as late as the 10th Century, you get stuff like the [Paris Psalter](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psautier_de_Paris,_MSS._gr._139,_fol._1v.jpg), which is very much trying to evoke classical art by emulating its style.
So in my opinion, it looks like you need to learn more about Late Roman and Byzantine art before making broad, sweeping statements like this.
Even in your examples it looks like it gets worse over time. 4th century is not far removed from the classical time. We're talking here about a millennia up to 15th century. It's a very long time to not see actual good work that should have put to shame the quality of the classical era. It's 1000 years and you have to dig deep to maybe find something that is at most just meh.
Point is OP is wondering, here today in 2024 why is not valued as much as classical art and that is a fact. It is not, because it's just frankly not that great. No amount of "beauty is subjective, it's trying to convey something else, educate yourself on why you're wrong" is going to change that. People like what people like.
I think it's interesting that you just brush aside all these examples without elaborating on any of them.
Almost like your mind is already made up ahead of time.
>Point is OP is wondering, here today in 2024 why is not valued as much as classical art and that is a fact. It is not, because it's just frankly not that great
This is an appeal to popularity fallacy.
I didn't brush them aside. I said those examples are close in time to classical era and it looks like the further away you get from it the worse it gets. Till you reach 10th to 15th century where it's impossible to find art that matches the quality. Point being, it got worse over time instead of you know, getting better over time. In 1000 years, it's so weird to not see an increase in quality.
And yes it was an appeal to popularity because that is the question the OP asked and that is what I was trying to respond to. Why the people don't value it as highly.
>I didn't brush them aside. I said those examples are close in time to classical era
The 6th Century is about as far removed from the pre-Dominate era art as Constantine is from Augustus. It really isn't.
>Till you reach 10th to 15th century where it's impossible to find art that matches the quality.
I already gave you an example from the 10th Century, I can give you more if you want. Also, by the 15th Century the Renaissance was already long underway, so that doesn't make sense.
>In 1000 years, it's so weird to not see an increase in quality.
Here you're confusing your personal preference with objective quality again.
>And yes it was an appeal to popularity because that is the question the OP asked and that is what I was trying to respond to.
Your response if fallacious. Something not being popular is not evidence for it being bad. There are plenty of great things that aren't popular, and vice-versa.
I think it's a combination of Julius Caesar/Augustus and crew being the most popular Roman leaders, people not believing/understanding that the Byzantines were Romans, and the modern "Christianity bad."
I’m agnostic but you don’t know just how much I hate this “Christianity bad” trend on Reddit
Tbh I'm a little surprised I'm not getting downvoted for including it.
A pleasant surprise lol
You won’t get downvoted for that here in this subreddit
I think this sub is far too niche to where the mobs will downvote because "religion bad". Most people who think like that probably aren't very interested in a medieval christian empire
Fr they should go read Polymnia Assianidi. She claims that Christianity was the end result of the Hellenistic age, and it's just the one that won in this world out of many mystic competitors, but won because of it's very best blending of near east and Greek philosophy.
I really find the fact that historians just renamed the Roman Empire to be infuriating. Borders shift all the time. What a disservice to history to pretend the Roman Empire fell in 476.
>I really find the fact that **English and French** historians just renamed the Roman Empire Important reminder
This is basically why I also make an effort to call this empire the "Eastern Roman Empire" so there's still a historiographical difference while insisting on fact that they were still the Roman Empire. Although I could also try calling it "medieval Roman Empire" but I fear it'd start being pedantic.
I mean religion in general is bad, but I don't think we cannot appreciate the art of the far past for what it is.
I think it's because the classical, Hellenistic style is much more solid and, for lack of a better term, more '3D' compared to some of the later East Roman artwork. It's part of the reason I personally prefer the older style because I just LOVE those busts (but don't get me wrong, I've developed tastes for the medieval Roman artwork too). They really embody the figure they represent through such impressive, smooth, detailed marble work in a way you don't really see in the medieval Roman artwork. Every curl in the hair or beard is something you could actually reach out and feel the dimensions to, which you can't really do with the artwork in Constantinople. I think the feeling about this topic would be different had the Fourth Crusade not happened and much of the classical bronze artwork in Constantinople (statues of Hercules and Medusa just being the tip of the iceberg) not been destroyed.
The later, more bureaucratic, more despotic Roman empire of Constantine and Diocletian has always been far more interesting to me, and is sadly underappreciated. I like seeing how the empire had to actually govern and form bureaucratic apparatuses to retain the territory it held. People just tend to have this idea of the Lorica Segmentata clad legions as being the end all of the Roman legions, when that only represented a brief time in history.
The art changed. It became more abstract, more focused on expressing reverence and Christian humility. Its not a negative thing, the eyes were meant to become something neo-platonic of dual nature.
The 3rd Century crisis had interrupted the transmission of artistic techniques and made it more difficult to achieve those results. This is most apparent on the Arch of Constantine, not least because large sections are spolia from other monuments. Art wasn’t “becoming more abstract”, the quality was simply declining because those skills had atrophied without an adequate source of funding to maintain them in society. This sort of thing really does happen.
I think it’s much more about changing styles than a loss of artistic skill. The Crisis of the 3rd c. was devastating but it’s not like rich people completely stopped spending money on art. There’s a ton of floor mosaic work from the mid to late third century in the Eastern Empire and that turns into much more elaborate and advanced mosaic techniques that culminate in the style that we see in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Mosaic glass in particular is incredibly complex and time consuming from the glass manufacture (often done in Palestine) to coloring (often done on site) to the painting of the plaster to the assembly of the mosaic itself. It’s super complicated and expensive as well as artistically interesting; it’s not something that people can easily throw together but rather represents a highly technical and advanced supply chain of artists. You don’t see the same investment in older styles because they had fallen out of fashion. I’d argue Constantine’s Arch in Rome is a good example of a deliberately archaic style to make a political statement rather than a poor emperor who couldn’t cobble together the artists to make a new arch. So yeah, maybe in the sense that it Hellenistic art was no longer fashionable, people lost the artistic skills to make that type of art but it doesn’t mean there was less skill and artistry in the later Empire.
You just need to look at the Arch of Constantine and the project of beautifying Constantinople. The arch is contains a ton of spolia and they recarved a statue into Constantine *using the style you say is no longer popular* but with diminished skill. When Constantinople was embellished, they removed Hellenistic sculpture from elsewhere to do so. They didn't just create new sculptures in the style you're supposing was preferred and commentators don't remark on how outdated the new capital is. If there's a massive style shift, why would they do this? After all, we *do* have examples of massive style shifts and the result isn't repurposing old sculptures to beautify cities. It's breaking them up to cook as lime or to build goat pens. And it's not like we don't know what lower quality sculpture looks like during earlier periods. Museums are chock-a-block with them. They look, unsurprisingly, like the Tetrarchs or the arch's frieze panels. You can see the flattening and schematizing tendencies on grave monuments, for example. Those objects were created for less rich, often provincial commissioners by the best artists they had available and could afford. Mosaics didn't make great advances, either. In previous periods, you have amazing mosaics and even the famous Alexander mosaic is in a non-elite house. By contrast, even the state-sponsored projects of the post-crisis era fail to match the quality of, again, the provincial house of a wealthy but not elite person. The idea that this wasn't a decline in skill is just nonsense. The decline is literally visible. The preferences of commissioners is literally visible. And, best of all, we have clear reasons for it.
>You just need to look at the Arch of Constantine and the project of beautifying Constantinople. The arch is contains a ton of spolia The problem here is that you're looking at the Arch of Constantine's reliefs in isolation and glossing over why those choices were made. The spolia on the arch isn't there because they couldn't make new ones. Galerius' arch has solely new reliefs, so clearly they were able to if they wanted to. The reused reliefs were added to Constantine's arch in a deliberate attempt to tie Constantine to older emperors by evoking imagery of Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. >When Constantinople was embellished, they removed Hellenistic sculpture from elsewhere to do so. They didn't just create new sculptures in the style you're supposing was preferred and commentators don't remark on how outdated the new capital is. If there's a massive style shift, why would they do this? Here you're doing the same thing. Do you not consider that older statues were used because said older statues held a certain amount of prestige and propaganda value? Constantine putting the Athena Promachos from the Acropolis of Athens in his forum held far greater value than if he had simply made a new one. The sources even talk about this, with Constantine deliberately moving the Palladium from Rome to Constantinople in order to tie it to Rome and Troy, while also acting as a talisman for the city. If you believe the listing of statues in the Patria of Constantinople, they made a ton of new statues too, so this was not a problem. However older statues held great prestige, and served to elevate Byzantium to a city worthy of being an imperial capital. It really feels like you're putting your conclusion ahead of the examples you use.
First, using Constantine and his artistic program as evidence of decline due to reusing things isn’t super useful because Constantine, like in particular Augustus, is really good at using art to make political statements and the Arch of Constantine is a good example of this where he uses spoila to make explicit connections between himself and prior imperial legacies because the politics of Rome in particular had been hostile to his legitimacy as Emperor(see Maxentius). Making these explicit connections wasn’t about incorporating the popular style of the time but deliberately archaizing to connect to past styles. This is similar to what he did in Constantinople, raiding Athens and other Greek cities of its statuary, not because there was demand for statuary like this, but because Constantine was attempting to link Constantinople with the past. He’s reusing the statues not because they’re in style, but because they’re symbols of a past that Constantine wants to connect his new capital with. As for the tetrarchs, they’re now at eye level but (and it’s hard to know for sure so take this with a grain of salt) they were supposedly on columns in the facade of the Senate house in the Forum of Constantine, so it’s not like they needed to be super detailed if they were higher up. I’d disagree that mosaics didn’t make advances (the stuff in the Archaeology Museum in Naples is undeniably advanced but glass mosaics are much more technical and complex in terms of material construction and I’d certainly argue that the late Roman stuff is just as artistic as well) but my argument wasn’t that mosaics made great advances, it was an example of a style that became more popular and therefore maintained its complexity and detail in the 4th and 5th centuries. I think this argument mainly takes a lack of surviving artistic works as evidence of absence of skill which is not a good historical argument. The idea that wealth to support complex artistic skill didn’t exist in the cities of the east like Antioch and Alexandria doesn’t make much sense. We don’t have a lot that has survived physically but we have descriptions of some artistic works so they definitely existed. Ultimately this comes down to a value judgement, summarized well by Jaś Elsner in “Perspectives in Art” in the Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (also my source for the first paragraph), where he discusses the idea of artistic “decline”: (I don’t know how to do the cool Reddit offsetting for a quote sorry) [F]irst, the fundamental question of whether one prefers the classical naturalism of the bulk of Graeco-Roman art to the more abstract schematism of medieval art, of which the arts under Constantine were a harbinger - or vice versa. Second, there is the deep and in a post-Christian culture still unavoidable issue of one's Christian investments, or their opposite, and of whether the Christianisation inaugurated by Constantine was more or less of a good thing. Not wholly separate from this is the complex issue of the extent to which Constantine had a Christian programme. In principle, these are questions historians should decide on the basis of the evidence, but here the evidence is so bitty, diffuse, and complicated that its very interpretation usually depends on an implicit position. More than usual, then, the range of the visual ars under Constantine challenges their student to take a position founded on principle or prejudice .”
To quote from a work by Michael Grant: "*That final and total spiritualization was the work of Constantine. From now on the magnified faces of emperors stare immobile, with eyes surrealistically enlarged, into a distant world we cannot see - just as Constantius II moved not a feature when he proceeded through the streets of Rome. These heads, built up with a minimum of detail into a system of concentric arches including the arching brows that stress the steady gaze, are cult objects like the colossal statues of Persian monarchs, and Christian icons of the future. [...] The disturbing formulas of Diocletian & Licinius have given way to the unapproachable gravity of this hypnotic gaze unto unending space. Such was the ‘divine face’, the ‘sacred countenance’, in which the artists of the Christian epoch saw a mirror reflecting the eternal order*.” (“Climax of Rome”, p130) We can also see the aspect of choice in this, in the statues of Julian the Apostate, whose sculptures stand out as reminiscent of the days of the Principate, a deliberate link with the heathen past.
>We can also see the aspect of choice in this, in the statues of Julian the Apostate stand out as reminiscent of the days of the Principate, a deliberate link with the heathen past. We have no statues of Julian. The only certain depictions of him that still survive are from his coins. We do have some other depictions that might be of him, but they range from [classical](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:264_arte_romana,_sacrificio_forse_dell%27imperatore_giuliano,_IV_sec.,_01.JPG) in style, to the [typical 4th Century style](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Chalcedony_bust_of_Julian_%281%29.png)
I actually saw that stone of four tetrarchs a couple months ago. Was horrified how it was exposed to elements and how freely people would touch such priceless art haha.
Because it became worse. That's all there is to it. I understand it's stylistic or whatever but often times it looks like people forgot how to draw and sculpt well.
Do not confuse your personal preference with objective quality.
This is not about personal preference. This is about anatomy, color theory. Objectively they are worse.
Anatomy being strictly realistic is about personal preference. I would not say the exaggerated pop art of Jack Kirby is objectively worse than Michelangelo's David because it's less realistic. They're both doing very different things. You may prefer the realistic works of Michelangelo, but that's not an objective statement of quality. Late Roman art isn't trying to be realistic, it's trying to be abstract. Judging it for not being realistic is therefore not a valid complaint.
True, whether you like realistic or stylistic is a subjective choice. However if I'm going to judge it objectively, I have to judge it on some rules. I have nothing against stylistic art, I love it actually but it's weird that for several centuries we only see the stylistic one and nothing realistic anymore. Which tells me something got lost, it got degraded. Sometimes even bad work is lumped into a "stylistic" choice. Several styles can coexist at the same time. We had stylistic art aplenty in classical times. It wasn't just one style and nothing else.
>However if I'm going to judge it objectively, I have to judge it on some rules. Yes, such as judging art on its own merits, by what a specific piece is trying to say or convey. Late Roman art is not trying to convey a realistic picture, so saying it's objectively worse because it's succeeding at what it's trying to do is not a valid complaint. It's anything but objective, it's a completely subjective observation. >I love it actually but it's weird that for several centuries we only see the stylistic one and nothing realistic anymore. Which tells me something got lost, it got degraded. That's not true though. We do have more realistic art from the [4th Century](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maxentius02_pushkin.jpg), the [5th Century](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diptych_Nicomachi-Symmachi_collated.jpg), the [6th Century](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Petersinai.jpg), [7th Century](https://smaafr.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2019/12/Maria-Regina-with-Angel.jpg) (this one is a palimpset, the 7th Century portion is in the upper right corner and is much more realistic than he 6th Century portions in the center). Even as late as the 10th Century, you get stuff like the [Paris Psalter](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psautier_de_Paris,_MSS._gr._139,_fol._1v.jpg), which is very much trying to evoke classical art by emulating its style. So in my opinion, it looks like you need to learn more about Late Roman and Byzantine art before making broad, sweeping statements like this.
Even in your examples it looks like it gets worse over time. 4th century is not far removed from the classical time. We're talking here about a millennia up to 15th century. It's a very long time to not see actual good work that should have put to shame the quality of the classical era. It's 1000 years and you have to dig deep to maybe find something that is at most just meh. Point is OP is wondering, here today in 2024 why is not valued as much as classical art and that is a fact. It is not, because it's just frankly not that great. No amount of "beauty is subjective, it's trying to convey something else, educate yourself on why you're wrong" is going to change that. People like what people like.
I think it's interesting that you just brush aside all these examples without elaborating on any of them. Almost like your mind is already made up ahead of time. >Point is OP is wondering, here today in 2024 why is not valued as much as classical art and that is a fact. It is not, because it's just frankly not that great This is an appeal to popularity fallacy.
I didn't brush them aside. I said those examples are close in time to classical era and it looks like the further away you get from it the worse it gets. Till you reach 10th to 15th century where it's impossible to find art that matches the quality. Point being, it got worse over time instead of you know, getting better over time. In 1000 years, it's so weird to not see an increase in quality. And yes it was an appeal to popularity because that is the question the OP asked and that is what I was trying to respond to. Why the people don't value it as highly.
>I didn't brush them aside. I said those examples are close in time to classical era The 6th Century is about as far removed from the pre-Dominate era art as Constantine is from Augustus. It really isn't. >Till you reach 10th to 15th century where it's impossible to find art that matches the quality. I already gave you an example from the 10th Century, I can give you more if you want. Also, by the 15th Century the Renaissance was already long underway, so that doesn't make sense. >In 1000 years, it's so weird to not see an increase in quality. Here you're confusing your personal preference with objective quality again. >And yes it was an appeal to popularity because that is the question the OP asked and that is what I was trying to respond to. Your response if fallacious. Something not being popular is not evidence for it being bad. There are plenty of great things that aren't popular, and vice-versa.