The works we can see in museums today give us a very limited picture of Roman art.

The statues that have been preserved are mainly of marble and stone. There were, however, also sculptures in wood, plaster, terracotta, bronze, gold, silver and ivory.

The sculptures normally had painted hair, beards, lips, eyebrows, and eyelashes. The irises of the eyes and clothes were also coloured.

The development of this art form was subject to fashions and trends, varying from the Greek-influenced neoclassicism to the crude realism more popular in the Roman world.

The most characteristic forms of Roman art were the historical relief and the portrait.

With a few exceptions, the majority of Roman sculptures of divinities and heroes are copies of Greek prototypes. There are copies and variations of almost all the periods of Greek art, from the Late-Archaic to Hellenism. Nevertheless, despite this formal dependence on Greek sculpture, this form of Roman art brought originality to the medium and reflected specific historical, political, social and economic situations.