The Boundaries of Art and Social Space in Rome

The Boundaries of Art and Social Space in Rome PDF

Author: Frederick Jones

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-10-06

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1472529995

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This volume focuses on four cultural phenomena in the Roman world of the late Republic - the garden, a garden painting, tapestry, and the domestic caged bird. They accept or reject a categorisation as art in varying degrees, but they show considerable overlaps in the ways in which they impinge on social space. The study looks, therefore, at the borderlines between things that variously might or might not seem to be art forms. It looks at boundaries in another sense too. Boundaries between different social modes and contexts are embodied and represented in the garden and paintings of gardens, reinforced by the domestic use of decorative textile work, and replicated in the bird cage. The boundaries thus thematised map on to broader boundaries in the Roman house, city, and wider world, becoming part of the framework of the citizen's cognitive development and individual and civic identities. Frederick Jones presents a novel analysis that uses the perspective of cognitive development in relation to how elements of domestic and urban visual culture and the broader world map on to each other. His study for the first time understands the domestic caged bird as a cultural object and uniquely brings together four disparate cases under the umbrella of 'art'.

Gender and the Body in Greek and Roman Sculpture

Gender and the Body in Greek and Roman Sculpture PDF

Author: Rosemary Barrow

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-11

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1107039541

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Offers analysis of selected works of ancient art through a critical use of cutting-edge theory from gender studies, body studies, and art history.

Man and Animal in Severan Rome

Man and Animal in Severan Rome PDF

Author: Steven D. Smith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-07-24

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1107033985

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This book argues that Aelian's important work on animals, the De natura animalium, represents a sophisticated literary critique of Severan Rome. His fascination with animals reflects the cultural issues of his day: philosophy, religion, the exoticism of Egypt and India, sex, gender, and imperial politics.

The Art of the Roman Empire

The Art of the Roman Empire PDF

Author: Jaś Elsner

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-04-27

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0191081094

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The passage from Imperial Rome to the era of late antiquity, when the Roman Empire underwent a religious conversion to Christianity, saw some of the most significant and innovative developments in Western culture. This stimulating book investigates the role of the visual arts, the great diversity of paintings, statues, luxury arts, and masonry, as both reflections and agents of those changes. Jas' Elsner's ground-breaking account discusses both Roman and early Christian art in relation to such issues as power, death, society, acculturation, and religion. By examining questions of reception, viewing, and the culture of spectacle alongside the more traditional art-historical themes of imperial patronage and stylistic change, he presents a fresh and challenging interpretation of an extraordinarily rich cultural crucible in which many fundamental developments of later European art had their origins. This second edition includes a new discussion of the Eurasian context of Roman art, an updated bibliography, and new, full colour illustrations.

Visual Style and Constructing Identity in the Hellenistic World

Visual Style and Constructing Identity in the Hellenistic World PDF

Author: Miguel John Versluys

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-29

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1108210880

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Located in the small kingdom of Commagene at the upper Euphrates, the late Hellenistic monument of Nemrud Dağ (c.50 BC) has been undeservedly neglected by scholars. Qualified as a Greco-Persian hybrid instigated by a lunatic king, this fascinating project of bricolage has been written out of history. This volume redresses that imbalance, interpreting Nemrud Dağ as an attempt at canon building by Antiochos I in order to construct a dynastic ideology and social order, and proving the monument's importance for our understanding of a crucial transitional phase from Hellenistic to Roman. Hellenistic Commagene therefore holds a profound significance for a number of discussions, such as the functioning of the Hellenistic koine and the genesis of Roman 'art', Hellenism and Persianism in antiquity, dynastic propaganda and the power of images, Romanisation in the East, the contextualising of the Augustan cultural revolution, and the role of Greek culture in the Roman world.

Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre

Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre PDF

Author: Aaron P. Johnson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-03-28

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1107354870

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Porphyry, a native of Phoenicia educated in Athens and Rome during the third century AD, was one of the most important Platonic philosophers of his age. In this book, Professor Johnson rejects the prevailing modern approach to his thought, which has posited an early stage dominated by 'Oriental' superstition and irrationality followed by a second rationalizing or Hellenizing phase consequent upon his move west and exposure to Neoplatonism. Based on a careful treatment of all the relevant remains of Porphyry's originally vast corpus (much of which now survives only in fragments), he argues for a complex unity of thought in terms of philosophical translation. The book explores this philosopher's critical engagement with the processes of Hellenism in late antiquity. It provides the first comprehensive examination of all the strands of Porphyry's thought that lie at the intersection of religion, theology, ethnicity and culture.

Sight and the Ancient Senses

Sight and the Ancient Senses PDF

Author: Michael Squire

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1317515382

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It is to Greek critical thinking about seeing that we owe our conceptual framework for theorizing the senses, and it is also to such thinking that we owe the lasting legacy of Greco-Roman imagery. Sight and the Ancient Senses is the first thorough introduction to the conceptualization of sight in the history, visual culture, literature and philosophy of classical antiquity. Examining how the Greeks and Romans interpreted what they saw, the collection also considers sight in relation to the other senses. This volume brings together a number of interdisciplinary perspectives to deliver a broad and balanced coverage of this subject. Contributors explore the cultural, social and intellectual backdrops that gave rise to ancient theories of seeing, from Archaic Greece through to the advent of Christianity in late antiquity. This series of specially commissioned thematic chapters demonstrate how theories about sight informed Graeco-Roman philosophy, science, poetry rhetoric and art. The collection also reaches beyond its Graeco-Roman visual framework, showcasing how ancient ideas have influenced the longue durée of western sensory thinking. Richly illustrated throughout, including a section of color plates, Sight and the Ancient Senses is a wide-ranging introduction to ancient theories of seeing which will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of classical antiquity.

Greek Myths in Roman Art and Culture

Greek Myths in Roman Art and Culture PDF

Author: Zahra Newby

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-09-15

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 1316720608

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Images of episodes from Greek mythology are widespread in Roman art, appearing in sculptural groups, mosaics, paintings and reliefs. They attest to Rome's enduring fascination with Greek culture, and its desire to absorb and reframe that culture for new ends. This book provides a comprehensive account of the meanings of Greek myth across the spectrum of Roman art, including public, domestic and funerary contexts. It argues that myths, in addition to functioning as signifiers of a patron's education or paideia, played an important role as rhetorical and didactic exempla. The changing use of mythological imagery in domestic and funerary art in particular reveals an important shift in Roman values and senses of identity across the period of the first two centuries AD, and in the ways that Greek culture was turned to serve Roman values.