In the emperor Vespasian’s portraits, something of the old, dry style returned. This can be observed in his striking likeness on one of two historical reliefs that were unearthed in Rome near the Palazzo della Cancelleria. A similarly sketchy and impressionistic handling of the hair is found on the emperor Titus’s portraits, whereas the third Flavian emperor, Domitian, affected a more pictorial hairdo in imitation of the coiffure introduced by Nero. Still more picturesque are the female hair styles of the time, which display piles of corkscrew ringlets or tight, round curls. The Cancelleria reliefs date from the close of Domitian’s reign and depict, respectively, Vespasian’s triumphal entry and reception in Rome in 70 ce and Domitian’s profectio (“setting out”), under the aegis of Mars, Minerva, and Virtus, for one of his northern wars. They are worked in a two-dimensional, academic, classicizing style that is in marked contrast with the vivid, three-dimensional rendering of space and depth, with brilliant interplay of light and shade, on the panels of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. The latter reliefs, which present two excerpts from Titus’s triumph in Palestine, were carved in the early 80s. The late Domitianic classicizing manner appears again in the frieze of the Forum Transitorium, which the emperor Nerva completed. This conflict of relief styles within the Flavian period is but one illustration of the ceaseless, unpredictable ebb and flow of different aesthetic principles throughout the history of imperial art.

Age of Trajan

In portraits of Trajan, a deepening of the bust, which was already seen in the later Flavian period, was carried a stage further; there is a new fluidity in the molding of the face; in the hair, which is plastered down across the brow, there is a partial revival of the late republican linear style. Aesthetically, one of the finest known likenesses of the emperor is a marble head from Ostia. On his monumental column there is a series of less idealized and probably more faithful renderings of his features. The coiffures of Trajanic ladies are, if anything, even more elaborate and extravagant than those of their Flavian predecessors.

The reliefs of Trajan’s Column, illustrating the two Dacian campaigns of 101–102 and 105–106 and winding up the shaft in a spiral band of Parian marble three feet (one metre) wide, are generally recognized to be the classic example of the continuous method of narration in Roman art. The episodes merge into one another without any punctuation, apart from an occasional tree; Trajan appears again and again in different situations, activities, and costumes. A statuesque figure of Victory separates the histories of the two wars. There are 23 spirals and about 2,500 figures. A high level of technical accomplishment is maintained throughout, and the interest and excitement of the theme never flag. Since the figures of people and animals had to be distinguished from a distance, they are inevitably overlarge in proportion to their landscape and architectural settings; and in order to avoid awkward empty spaces along the upper edges of the band and to preserve an allover, even, tapestry-like effect, background figures in the scenes are reared in bird’s-eye-view perspective above the heads of those in the foreground. These carvings must be visualized as once brightly painted, with weapons and horse trappings added in metal. The sources of the scenes were possibly wartime sketches made by army draftsmen at the front, but the fusing together of those isolated pictures into a single scroll was the work of a single master artist, perhaps Apollodorus of Damascus, who designed the whole complex of Trajan’s forum, basilica, and column.

The column (the interior of which contains a spiral staircase) had first been intended primarily as a lookout post for viewing Trajan’s architectural achievements—his forum and its adjacent markets, to accommodate which he sliced away the slope of the Quirinal Hill. By the time of its dedication in 113, when the relief bands had been added and an eagle planned for the top of the capital, it had become a war memorial. Finally, it became Trajan’s future tomb, crowned by his statue (which was later replaced by that of St. Peter) and containing a funerary chamber for the urns holding his and his consort’s ashes.

To the last years of Trajan’s reign or to the early years of that of his successor should be attributed four horizontal panels that adorn the main passageway and the attic ends of the Arch of Constantine in Rome. If fitted together they would form a continuous frieze of three main scenes, which are, from left to right, an imperial triumphal entry, a battle, and the presentation to the emperor of prisoners and the severed heads of captives by Roman soldiers. It seems clear that these sculptures were made between around 115 and 120, perhaps for the Temple of Divus Trajanus and Diva Plotina that was erected by Hadrian just to the north of the column. The presence on this frieze of chain-mail corselets, rarely seen on Trajan’s Column, seems to indicate that that type of armour, so common under the Antonines, first came into general use in late Trajanic or early Hadrianic times. These reliefs do not depict realistic fighting, as do those of the column, but a kind of ideal or dramatized warfare, with the emperor himself participating in the melee and the soldiers wearing plumed and richly embossed parade helmets; the scenes melt into one another with a disregard of spatial and temporal logic.

A third example of Trajanic monumental sculpture is the relief decoration of the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum (Benevento), which is covered with pictorial slabs, the subjects of which are arranged to carry out a carefully balanced and nicely calculated order of ideas. Those on the side facing the city and on one wall of the passageway present themes from Trajan’s policy and work for Rome and Italy; those on the side toward the country and on the other wall of the passageway allude to his achievements abroad. With two exceptions, where a pair of scenes forms a single picture, each panel is a self-contained unit. The reliefs already show something of the classicizing, two-dimensional character of Hadrianic work. Indeed, it seems likely that, although the arch itself was either decreed or dedicated in 114 or 115, some of the panels in which Hadrian is given a peculiar prominence were not carved until the early years of the latter’s principate.

The frieze of a great, circular Tropaeum Trajani, set up in the Dobruja (Romania) to commemorate victories over the Dacians, contains a series of metopes (a decoration in a Doric frieze) carved with figure scenes in a flat, linear style that suggests the hands of army artists of provincial origin.