Under the title "late Roman industrial art", Aloïs Riegl tackled one of the most controversial periods in the history of art, a period long considered to be decadent and lacking in creative ability. Riegl rigorously showed that late Roman art is neither a residual prolongation nor a redundant appendage to Roman art. To do this, he studied the architecture, sculpture, painting and industrial art of the period, writing an already classic text in the course of the history of art and in its formation as a scientific discipline.