Roman sculpture was an integral part of Roman life, and the Romans placed statues and reliefs in their flora, basilicas, temples and public baths as well as in their houses, villas, gardens and tombs.
What is a an anthemion? What is giallo antico marble? Who was Praxiteles? This richly illustrated book -- in the popular Looking At series -- presents definitions and descriptions of these and many other terms relating to Greek and Roman sculpture encountered in museum exhibitions and publications on ancient stone sculpture. This is an indispensable guide to anyone looking for greater understanding of ancient sculpture and heightened enjoyment of the objects. Book jacket.
For centuries, statuary décor was a main characteristic of any city, sanctuary, or villa in the Roman world. However, from the third century CE onward, the prevalence of statues across the Roman Empire declined dramatically. By the end of the sixth century, statues were no longer a defining characteristic of the imperial landscape. Further, changing religious practices cast pagan sculpture in a threatening light. Statuary production ceased, and extant statuary was either harvested for use in construction or abandoned in place. The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture is the first volume to approach systematically the antique destruction and reuse of statuary, investigating key responses to statuary across most regions of the Roman world. The volume opens with a discussion of the complexity of the archaeological record and a preliminary chronology of the fate of statues across both the eastern and western imperial landscape. Contributors to the volume address questions of definition, identification, and interpretation for particular treatments of statuary, including metal statuary and the systematic reuse of villa materials. They consider factors such as earthquake damage, late antique views on civic versus “private” uses of art, urban construction, and deeper causes underlying the end of the statuary habit, including a new explanation for the decline of imperial portraiture. The themes explored resonate with contemporary concerns related to urban decline, as evident in post-industrial cities, and the destruction of cultural heritage, such as in the Middle East.
Situates the study of Roman sculpture within the fields of art history, classical archaeology, and Roman studies, presenting technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical approaches.
Gender and the Body in Greek and Roman Sculpture offers incisive analysis of selected works of ancient art through a critical use of cutting-edge theory from gender studies, body studies, art history and other related fields. The book raises important questions about ancient sculpture and the contrasting responses that the individual works can be shown to evoke. Rosemary Barrow gives close attention to both original context and modern experience, while directly addressing the question of continuity in gender and body issues from antiquity to the early modern period through a discussion of the sculpture of Bernini. Accessible and fully illustrated, her book features new translations of ancient sources and a glossary of Greek and Latin terms. It will be an invaluable resource and focus for debate for a wide range of readers interested in ancient art, gender and sexuality in antiquity, and art history and gender and body studies more broadly.
Figural and non-figural supports are a ubiquitous feature of Roman marble sculpture; they appear in sculptures ranging in size from miniature to colossal and of all levels of quality. At odds with modern ideas about beauty, completeness, and visual congruence, these elements, especially non-figural struts, have been dismissed by scholars as mere safeguards for production and transport. However, close examination of these features reveals the tastes and expectations of those who commissioned, bought, and displayed marble sculptures throughout the Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Drawing on a large body of examples, Greek and Latin literary sources, and modern theories of visual culture, this study constitutes the first comprehensive investigation of non-figural supports in Roman sculpture. The book overturns previous conceptions of Roman visual values and traditions and challenges our understanding of the Roman reception of Greek art.
During the Roman Empire lavish marble monuments to the dead were erected to decorate tombs and cemeteries. A group of these memorials, often so opulent that they required considerable economic sacrifice from the families who commissioned them, is catalogued in this volume.
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.