Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome
Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 9047441656

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The polytheistic religious systems of ancient Greece and Rome reveal an imaginative attitude towards the construction of the divine. One of the most important instruments in this process was certainly the visualisation. Images of the gods transformed the divine world into a visually experienceable entity, comprehensible even without a theoretical or theological superstructure. For the illiterates, images were together with oral traditions and rituals the only possibility to approach the idea of the divine; for the intellectuals, images of the gods could be allegorically transcended symbols to reflect upon. Based on the art historical and textual evidence, this volume offers a fresh view on the historical, literary, and artistic significance of divine images as powerful visual media of religious and intellectual communication.

Divine Secrets and Human Imaginations
Divine Secrets and Human Imaginations

Author: Angelika Berlejung

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 695

ISBN-13: 3161600347

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The articles in this volume of collected essays, written over the last two decades and all revised, updated, and supplemented with unpublished material, are grouped around two themes: Divine Secrets and Human Imaginations. The first essays deal with the production, initiation, use and function, the abduction, repatriation, and the replacement of divine images, their outer appearance, and the many facets of the divine presence theology in Ancient Mesopotamia. The essays on the second topic deal with human imaginations, human constructs, and constructed memories, which assign meaning to the past or to things or experiences that are beyond human control. Thematically, several aspects of the human condition are examined, such as the ideas associated in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East with death, corporeality, enemies, disasters, utopias, and passionate love.

Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World
Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World

Author: Jorge Tomás García

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-04-06

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1000574180

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The book examines the process of symbolic and material alteration of religious images in antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period. The process by which the form and meaning of images are modified and adapted for a new context is defined by a large number of spiritual, religious, artistic, geographical or historical circumstances. This book provides a defined theoretical framework for these symbolic and material alterations based on the concept of iconotropy; that is, the way in which images change and/or alter their meaning. Iconotropy is a key concept in religious history, particularly for periods in which religious changes, often turbulent, took place. In addition, the iconotropic process of appropriating cult images brought with it changes in the materiality of those images. Numerous accounts from antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period detail how cult images were involved in such processes of misinterpretation, both symbolically and materially. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture and religious history.

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture

Author: Elise A Friedland

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 737

ISBN-13: 0190266872

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The study of Roman sculpture has been an essential part of the disciplines of Art History and Classics since the eighteenth century. Famous works like the Laoco?n, the Arch of Titus, and the colossal portrait of Constantine are familiar to millions. Again and again, scholars have returned to sculpture to answer questions about Roman art, society, and history. Indeed, the field of Roman sculptural studies encompasses not only the full chronological range of the Roman world but also its expansive geography, and a variety of artistic media, formats, sizes, and functions. Exciting new theories, methods, and approaches have transformed the specialized literature on the subject in recent decades. Rather than creating another chronological catalogue of representative examples from various periods, genres, and settings, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture synthesizes current best practices for studying this central medium of Roman art, situating it within the larger fields of Art History, Classical Archaeology, and Roman Studies. This comprehensive volume fills the gap between introductory textbooks and highly focused professional literature. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture conveniently presents new technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical approaches to the study of Roman sculpture in one reference volume while simultaneously complementing textbooks and other publications that present well-known works in the corpus. The contributors to this volume address metropolitan and provincial material from the early republican period through late antiquity in an engaging and fresh style. Authoritative, innovative, and up-to-date, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture will remain an invaluable resource for years to come.

Gods and Garments
Gods and Garments

Author: Cecilie Brøns

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2016-11-30

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 1785703587

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Textiles comprise a vast and wide category of material culture and constitute a crucial part of the ancient economy. Yet, studies of classical antiquity still often leave out this important category of material culture, partly due to the textiles themselves being only rarely preserved in the archaeological record. This neglect is also prevalent in scholarship on ancient Greek religion and ritual, although it is one of the most vibrant and rapidly developing branches of classical scholarship. The aim of the present enquiry is, therefore, to introduce textiles into the study of ancient Greek religion and thereby illuminate the roles textiles played in the performance of Greek ritual and their wider consequences. Among the questions posed are how and where we can detect the use of textiles in the sanctuaries, and how they were used in rituals including their impact on the performance of these rituals and the people involved. Chapters centre on three themes: first, the dedication of textiles and clothing accessories in Greek sanctuaries is investigated through a thorough examination of the temple inventories. Second, the use of textiles to dress ancient cult images is explored. The examination of Hellenistic and Roman copies of ancient cult images from Asia Minor as well as depictions of cult images in vase-painting in collocation with written sources illustrates the existence of this particular ritual custom in ancient Greece. Third, the existence of dress codes in the Greek sanctuaries is addressed through an investigation of the existence of particular attire for ritual personnel as well as visitors to the sanctuaries with the help of iconography and written sources. By merging the study of Greek religion and the study of textiles, the current study illustrates how textiles are, indeed, central materialisations of Greek cult, by reason of their capacity to accentuate and epitomize aspects of identity, spirituality, position in the religious system, by their forms as links between the maker, user, wearer, but also as key material agents in the performance of rituals and communication with the divine.

Pantheon
Pantheon

Author: Joerg Ruepke

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 0691211558

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From one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, an innovative and comprehensive account of religion in the ancient Roman and Mediterranean world In this ambitious and authoritative book, Jörg Rüpke provides a comprehensive and strikingly original narrative history of ancient Roman and Mediterranean religion over more than a millennium—from the late Bronze Age through the Roman imperial period and up to late antiquity. While focused primarily on the city of Rome, Pantheon fully integrates the many religious traditions found in the Mediterranean world, including Judaism and Christianity. This generously illustrated book is also distinguished by its unique emphasis on lived religion, a perspective that stresses how individuals’ experiences and practices transform religion into something different from its official form. The result is a radically new picture of Roman religion and of a crucial period in Western religion—one that influenced Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even the modern idea of religion itself.

Image, Text, Stone
Image, Text, Stone

Author: Nikolaus Dietrich

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-07-18

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 311077576X

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This edited volume explores the intermediality of image and text in Graeco-Roman sculpture. Through its choice of authors, disciplinary backgrounds are deliberately merged in order to bridge the traditional gap between archaeologists, epigraphists and philologists, who for a long time studied statues, material inscriptions and literary epigrams within the closely confined borders of their individual disciplines. Through its choice of objects, privileging works of which there are significant material remains, through its inclusion of all kinds of figural-cum-inscriptional designs, ranging from grand sculpture to reliefs and ‘decorative’ marble-objects, and through its methodological emphasis on ‘close viewing’ (and reading!) of individual objects, this volume focuses on the materiality of both sculpture and inscription. This perspective is enriched by two comparative chapters on inscribing Greek vases and Roman walls (graffiti). The intermediality of image and inscription is envisaged from various thematic angles, including the intricacies of combining image and epigram (both materially and in literary projection), the original production and reception of inscribed sculpture in its ‘long life’, the viewing and ‘reading’ of sculpture in a space of movement, the issue of (re-)naming statues, and the image and inscription in its social and gender-historical context.

Making and Breaking the Gods
Making and Breaking the Gods

Author: Troels Myrup Kristensen

Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag

Published: 2013-06-30

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 8771244123

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The basic premise of the book at hand is that there is meaning to be 'excavated' (in both meanings of the word) from Christian responses to pagan sculpture in the period from the fourth to the sixth century. More than mindless acts of religious violence by fanatical mobs, these responses are revelatory of contemporary conceptions of images and the different ways in which the material manifestations of the pagan past could be negotiated in Late Antiquity. Statues were important to the social, political and religious life of cities across the Mediterranean, as well as part of a culture of representation that was intricately bound to bodily taxonomies and visual practices.

Johannine Belief and Graeco-Roman Devotion
Johannine Belief and Graeco-Roman Devotion

Author: Chris Seglenieks

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2020-09-29

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 3161597583

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"In this volume, Christopher Seglenieks offers a study of the complex meaning in John's Gospel of genuine belief, arguing it includes cognitive, relational, ethical, ongoing, and public aspects. He compares it with Graeco-Roman religious practices and highlights the distinctiveness of Johannine belief whose features are motivated by John's picture of Jesus." --