Plebeian Art

Abstract

Published in 1967 in the first issue of Dialoghi de Archeologia, of which Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli was founding editor, this article pioneered a new and more social-historical approach to Roman artistic production and reception. Informed by Marxist theory, Bandinelli proposed the use of the term “plebeian art” to define the art promoted by and made for the Roman nonelites (soldiers, colonists, freedmen, or minor magistrates) to the exclusion of both patricians and senators. It is argued that the artistic language of “plebeian art,” which typically responded to the specific private and local concerns of nonelite patrons, played a significant role in the development of the art of the Roman Empire.

KEYWORDS:

• Roman art
• Bandinelli
• Marxism
• Italy
• Roman Empire
• Roman
• Greek
• early Christian and Byzantine art
• Hellenic
• social history of art
• Trimalchio