>>17910539
4th century Roman art has always struck me as this strange creature of Greek Classical and Roman portraiture. It's not like this hasn't been a thing before, Augustus loved the same thing, but while Julio-Claudian art tended towards keeping a very strong portraiture. 4th century art has all the idealism of Classical art while clearly trying to represent a real person, even when the details like almond eyes and vacant expressions do not actually resemble one and are just the tropes from Classical art. When you get to the Colossi they get even more exaggerated and resemble really something completely new. I wouldn't take away any direct involvement in shaping this scene by Diocletian he was the main patron of art for 20 whole years and he had very strong views of how the empire should be and how he wanted to construct it, most of which succeeded.
