I have chosen two statues from different eras to make a comparison, "Marble Statue of Dionysos Leaning on an Archaistic Female Figure" from the Roman era and "Bronze Statue of Artemis and a Deer" from Greek or Roman, late Hellenistic or early Imperial periods. The reason why I have chosen these two objects are that both of them have one big figure and one small figure which makes eyes of viewers move around. They also depicted gods with smaller figures. These two statues have many differences as they are made of different materials and have different poses even though these have similar composition. .
First of all, the material used for Dionysos is marble and for Artemis is Bronze, indicating what kind of material was used as to show an aspect of cultural identity. Material is a great example of explaining cultural identity, because it tells how much people in the era care about their religion, art, and etc. How an artist deals with the material also shows what that culture was like in the era. Because bronze is more expensive than marble is, it is obvious that Greek's art did care more about gods and goddesses than Romans did. Romans also put passion in the statue of gods, but they put more effort in portraiture.
Many Romans artworks copied and took many parts of Greeks. One noticeable style is contrapposto. Statue of Dionysos has contrapposto, not too obviously though, even though it is from Greece. This statue also has a smaller female figure next to it. However, it is fairly different from the statue of Artemis, because the bigger figure is actually leaning on the smaller one. Since this statue is a copy of the Greek original, all of the aspects are like Greek original. Unlike the statue of Artemis, the bigger piece of this statue is actually attached to the smaller one as it puts its left arm on the head of the smaller piece, indicating that it is overpowering the smaller one. Artemis also has an obvious contrapposto position as the figure puts its weight on the right foot and the left foot is trailing.
