Severan art

Rome, Arch of Septimus Severus

Severan art is art production by the Roman Empire under the Severan dynasty, usually taken as running from 193 to 235, through the emperors Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus. Official Roman art of the military anarchy which followed, ending in 253 with Gallienus, has no character of its own and so can be seen as a continuation of Severan art, and so that art can be seen as running for the whole first half of the 3rd century.

In this period began the process that ended in the rupture between Roman art and that of Late Antiquity, the watershed between classical art and that of Byzantium and the Middle Ages. Some of Severan art's products saw the emergence of obvious elements from plebeian art and provincial art, whilst in other areas traditionally Hellenistic elements were kept alive longer, such as in portraiture, which flourished in this period with masterpieces of great psychological depth.

Bibliography

• (Italian) Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli & Mario Torelli, L'arte dell'antichità classica, Etruria-Roma, Utet, Torino 1976.
• (Italian) Pierluigi De Vecchi & Elda Cerchiari, I tempi dell'arte, volume 1, Bompiani, Milano 1999