Etruscans and Romans
The tomb art of the Etruscans and the vast buildings of Rome laid the foundation for all later Italian art.
Long before Rome became an empire, the Etruscans lived in what is today Tuscany and northern Lazio. They built cities, traded with the Greeks and left behind painted tomb chambers, bronze figures and large sculptures in fired clay. Their art is full of life, with smiling faces, dancers and banqueting couples. Much of what we know about them comes from their tombs. Many of the finds are now in museums in Rome, Florence and Tarquinia.
Rome absorbed the art of both the Etruscans and the Greeks. The Romans copied Greek statues on a large scale, but they also created something of their own: sharp, honest portraits, narrative reliefs of wars and victories, and an architecture of vaults, domes and concrete. Art was often a tool of power, and images of the emperors were everywhere in the empire. Roman copies are often all that survives of famous Greek originals. At the same time a distinctly Roman taste emerged, with greater interest in the real and the practical.
In Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, wall paintings and mosaics have been preserved in place. They show how wealthy Romans wanted their homes to look. In the 4th century Christianity was legalized, and the first churches were built. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476, but its forms lived on in Italy for another thousand years. Art became more symbolic and less naturalistic. Basilicas and mosaics from this period still survive in Rome.