A Digital Exhibition of Roman Art

Devastating Beauty

Roman Art and its Impacts upon
the Environment and Human Health

Enter the Exhibition
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Each section of the exhibit begins with a biography of a made thing, which serves as a point of entry into an exploration of the environmental consequences of its production, of the devastation that attended to its creation.

Origins of the Anthropocene

The impact of Roman civilization on the natural world outweighed anything that went before or would follow until the Industrial Revolution. Heavy metal contamination from Roman metallurgy survives today in Greenland glaciers, Cappadocian lake sediments, and the soils of the Atlantic world. This project is the first attempt to assess that impact art-historically.

The Collection

Five Material Worlds

Organized by the natural resources exploited in each thing's creation.

I

Section I

Trees & Plants

A Roman lute — one of only four wooden stringed instruments to survive from antiquity — opens an exploration of arboriculture, forestry, and the environmental devastation of deforestation. Wood fuelled metallurgy, ceramics, glass production, and the entire machinery of empire.

Point of Entry: Lute, Met 12.182.44 Explore
II

Section II

Minerals & Metals

A small decorated lead coffin, once the resting place of an infant in Roman Syria, introduces the mortal cost of metallurgy. Roman lead smelting contaminated soil, air, and bodies — reducing life expectancy and possibly average stature across the empire.

Point of Entry: Lead Coffin, Met 61.206 Explore
III

Section III

Stone, Clay, Salt & Sand

A bathhouse mosaic floor from Antioch opens into the world of quarried marble, fired ceramics, and glass manufactured with Egyptian natron. These materials built the monumental face of empire while scarring the earth — and the bodies of those who worked it.

Point of Entry: Mosaic Floor, Met 40.185 Explore
IV

Section IV

Creatures

A bone gaming piece introduces a world of leisure sustained by animal sacrifice. Lions, leopards, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses were hunted to regional extinction for Roman spectacle. On Djerba, millions of murex shells mark the near-extinction of the sea snail harvested for Tyrian purple dye.

Point of Entry: Bone Checker, Met 96.9.434 Explore
V

Section V

Water

A copper alloy water conduit — shaped to give form to water even as it conveyed it — opens the final section. Water was both the first thing and the most shaped by all the others: aqueducts, baths, baptismal fonts, and sewers discharging lead into harbours and rivers.

Point of Entry: Water Conduit, Met 47.100.41a,b Explore
Lead infant coffin, Roman Syria, c. 4th–5th century CE, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lead infant coffin, Roman Syria, c. 4th–5th century CE
Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. 61.206

Featured Object

A Child's Coffin of Lead

This small decorated lead coffin — once the final resting place of an infant who lived but briefly in Roman Syria — is among the exhibition's most eloquent objects. It is beautiful and devastating in equal measure.

The lead from which it was cast may well have contributed to the child's death. Roman smelting introduced lead contamination into the food chain, the water supply, and the very air breathed in imperial cities. The consequences for human health — especially the health of children — were catastrophic, and remain not fully ascertained.

Read about the object at the Met
Navigation

Learning Pathways

The exhibition is designed for non-linear exploration. Visitors may follow their own paths through the collection using these organizing lenses.

Geo-location

Trace objects from sites of production, through provenance, to their current museum homes — following Roman reach across the ancient world.

Environment

Track heavy metal contamination, deforestation, climate change proxies, and disruption to flora and fauna across the Roman world.

Human Health

Examine lead poisoning, occupational disease, and the bodies behind beautiful things — from miners and smelters to weavers and dyers.

Motifs

Trace shared visual motifs — fauna, flora, holy, geometric — across objects, materials, and centuries of Roman artistic production.

Materials Analysis

Explore the scientific results of XRF, isotopic analysis, and spectroscopy conducted on objects at partner institutions.

3D Visualizations

Interact with three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, revealing details and damage patterns invisible to the naked eye.

Explore the Project

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