Every civilization has an idea of the perfect human form. In art this fact is shown off very often. This is mostly done with the leaders of nations in order to show them as being the most powerful or perfect figure to rule over the people. This practice, however, while universally done has no one true answer, and this is shown with the evolution of Romes ideal emperor. In the early days the ideal figure of a man was to be well aged. This would show that the man had lived a long life and had thus learned many things and was very wise. Roman leaders including the emperor himself, being men in their prime, used an aging technique and the style verism to age themselves and show the whole of their bodies including the imperfections for their
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Back to bumps and wrinkles all over the face and showing off the imperfections of age. Now something I haven 't touched on yet is why the emperors even cared about how they looked in the art that they commissioned. The reason for this is that they were worshiped just as the gods were. Not quiet to the level of the Egyptian Pharaohs, but along the same lines. They wanted to appear as the perfect ideals of the Roman civilization. They were their rules and since the empire was so large they wanted people to know who they were. They wanted them to see them as the as perfect a leader as they could be, so they tried to look as ideal as possible for the people to look upon their statues or paintings and see that they were the rightful rules of the empires. As said earlier I do not think that the Romans ever truly worshiped their ancestors. I can, however, see the correlation between the two subjects of showing off the imperfections of the flesh with verism to show age and that equalizing wisdom and the worship of ancestors. Personally, I like the idea of verism. That said, that may just be me growing up in an era where flawless skin, hour glass bodies, and rock hard muscles are the ideals of perfection. Then again, that may just be a personal bias since I have a body that is loaded with
Back to bumps and wrinkles all over the face and showing off the imperfections of age. Now something I haven 't touched on yet is why the emperors even cared about how they looked in the art that they commissioned. The reason for this is that they were worshiped just as the gods were. Not quiet to the level of the Egyptian Pharaohs, but along the same lines. They wanted to appear as the perfect ideals of the Roman civilization. They were their rules and since the empire was so large they wanted people to know who they were. They wanted them to see them as the as perfect a leader as they could be, so they tried to look as ideal as possible for the people to look upon their statues or paintings and see that they were the rightful rules of the empires. As said earlier I do not think that the Romans ever truly worshiped their ancestors. I can, however, see the correlation between the two subjects of showing off the imperfections of the flesh with verism to show age and that equalizing wisdom and the worship of ancestors. Personally, I like the idea of verism. That said, that may just be me growing up in an era where flawless skin, hour glass bodies, and rock hard muscles are the ideals of perfection. Then again, that may just be a personal bias since I have a body that is loaded with