Fascinating to see the realism of these portraits degrade toward the end of the empire....pic.twitter.com/wHOMHduxUQ
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Short version is that it's a change in artistic conventions that you see in the third century. (IIRC it originated at the Empire's periphery.) It happens in both Western and Eastern Empires as idealized and naturalistic ceases to become the convention.
Thanks for weighing in with some actual knowledge! Do you know if artists/minters were still generally _capable_ of the same level of realism? It sounds like you’re saying ppl just preferred a more stylized depiction, but I can’t help wonder if they actually lost something.
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Up until about fifty years ago scholars said that this was part of a decline in ability, basically your classic Decay of Rome. The more recent approach (AIUI) is that it's not that ability declines as much as "What should art look like?" changes.
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Do you know what kind of evidence/argument differentiates the two hypotheses?
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they definitely lost something. Constantine had to borrow marble from other monuments to make his triumphal arch.
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Roman art in the early third century was at its apogeepic.twitter.com/eEMUy2TUmA
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but by the fourth century there was a marked decline in realism and qualitypic.twitter.com/5dls0reC7y
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the late empire was ravaged by disasters of every kind, the decline in the quality of art wasn't just about style.
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