Arch of Constantine
Rome’s largest surviving triumphal arch was erected after Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312. It has three openings and Corinthian columns, and much of the sculpture is reused from monuments to earlier emperors, with their faces recut as Constantine’s.
The arch stands between the Colosseum and the Palatine, along the route followed by triumphal processions. It was dedicated in 315, ten years after Constantine became emperor. The Senate’s inscription says that he was victorious “by divine inspiration”, a cautious formulation at a moment when the emperor was drawing closer to Christianity but the city was still pagan.
The arch is one of the clearest examples of spolia, reused parts. The reliefs and statues come from monuments to Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, the emperors regarded as the good ones, and Constantine thereby placed himself in their ranks. Beside them the newly made frieze of Constantine’s campaign looks flat and stiff, and art historians have seen it as a sign of how the visual language of late antiquity was changing, towards the frontal and symbolic manner that later characterised Byzantine art.