The Sunset of 3D

A number of studies have recently been devoted to the issue of the end of ancient sculpture. Less attention has been devoted to the relationship between this decline and the growth of other artistic genres with different aims and patronage. The paper focuses some crucial points and compares the representative art of the Roman empire with the figurative cycle of the Christian basilicas; the shift in portraits from honorary statues to two-dimensional paintings on wood, fresco or mosaic; and some of the new codes together with the survival and transformation of old and well-rooted concepts. Different public spaces (devoted to the Christian cult), different patrons (not only clerical), a different concept of membership between the civic and the ecclesiastical domain are responsible for several of these changes. Of course, economic constraints also played an important role, but they cannot be considered as the sole reason for this evolution. At the same time, a number of essential functions remain under the new practice, such as the need to identify a portrait or to distinguish between living and dead. Some elements of literary, epigraphical and archaeological documentation (frontality, square nimbus versus round halo, integration of architecture and figurative decoration) acquire, in this perspective, a more precise meaning.