In Rome, memorial sculpture is almost always an accessory of architecture; but it is, nevertheless, almost wholly pictorial in character. The vigorous and realistic frieze which envelops in a superb spiral the column of Trajan (a war memorial set up in A.D. 113) is an example, as are also the fine reliefs of the arch of Titus (A.D. 7 I) , set up to celebrate the capture of Jerusalem. The sculpture of the "Ara Pacis Augustae" (13 B.c.), one of the few monuments set up to commemorate a peace, are more idealized, as is also the contemporary "Augustus of the Prima Porta," one of the finest achievements of Roman monumental art.
From the beginning the Christian Church marked the graves of her apostles and her martyrs with a stone or bronze memorial. The character of these did not at first differ from other contem porary memorials except by the occasional use of Christian sym bols. The vast number of sarcophagi in Rome, executed for the most part after the reign of Constantine, illustrate the develop ment of this Hellenistic art, in which classic forms and drapery, not without dignity and grace, are united intricately with the con ventional decorative motives of orientalized Antioch or the genre detail of Alexandria. After the 5th century they share the technical decadence of Rome.
The revival of the arts under Justinian—and later under Charlemagne—found a wide expression in intimate sculpture such as ivory carvings and architectural ornament, but left few exam ples of monumental art. The bronze Easter column, set up it is said by St. Bernard, in the cathedral at Hildesheim is little more than a piece of constructed ornament. It was not until the loth and iith centuries, when the sculptor was called upon to decorate the new monastic buildings, that the monumental spirit was once more revived. Developed in the abbey doorways, where the sculp tor had to learn anew the technique of stone carving and of render ing the human figure, this spirit gradually entered once more the sepulchral art of Germany and France. It is felt first perhaps
in that form of tomb in which a sculptured figure of the deceased is cut or moulded on top of a sarcophagus or on the sepulchral slab let into the floor of abbey or cloister. Although these figures continued for a long time to be only flat reliefs scratched into the flat surface of the stone they are idealized and simple forms. When, after the II th century, they begin to be carved in bolder relief and finally in the round, the figure is still conceived, as in the incised reliefs, in a standing posture, but laid on his back. The form is rigid, the head erect, and the draperies, unaffected by the change in position, drop in stiff, thinly cut folds from shoulder to feet. Germany was the centre for the production of these grave. reliefs, which show a progressive development in technique. The relief grows higher and higher, the figure and the features gain steadily in idealism and in dignity, and the draperies show an increasing beauty of pattern and line. The series of effigies at Ovedlinburg, representing the abbesses of that monastery, illustrate this evo lution.
The sepulchral effigies of the 13th century share those ideal and simple qualities which are manifest in the cathedral doorways, but the preoccupation of the sculptor with architecture prevented a wide or sustained development in this field. That development had to await the 14th century when the decoration of the architectural structure of the cathedrals seemed gradually less important than their embellishment with furniture, with retables and chapel screens, and with tombs wherein an individual patron, rather than a community, might be commemorated. This new patronage, which removed the sculpture from the geometric lines of the build ing, accelerated the growth of naturalism which can be traced more continuously in the tomb figures than in any other field. The body, laid at full length on the stone slab, begins to lose its rigidity. Its forms are clearly defined below the drapery which flows over it in an increasing complexity of fold. The features attain first a realism that approaches portraiture and then, as the influence of St. Francis permeates religion, they take on an emotional or sentimental quality. Accessories, symbols, details of costume and heraldry are rendered with greater and greater elaboration.