{"title":"The Iconography of Early Christian Roman Art","authors":"Sean V. Leatherbury","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.19","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on works of art produced in the third and early fourth centuries, this chapter considers works in four media—sculpture, painting, mosaic, and textile—in order to illuminate how artists working for Christian patrons adapted and ultimately transformed earlier Roman visual traditions. While some traditional Roman media such as sculpture went out of fashion in the period, iconographies were transferred from three- to two-dimensional forms such as mosaics, which became popular in church interiors. Christian image programs in spaces of worship as well as burial used visual strategies such as typology, the comparison of events from the Old and New Testaments, to present statements of belief, including the hope for salvation after death. Many of the images of “Christian art” were also popular with pagans and Jews but took on particular meanings in the context of spaces used by Christians.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122195005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imagery in Jewish and Christian Ritual Settings","authors":"M. Grey, Mark Ellison","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.23","url":null,"abstract":"During the Roman period, Jewish and Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean had a complex relationship with the visual culture of the larger Greco-Roman world. Both groups, in their attempts to be set apart as distinct ethnic or religious entities while at the same time remaining integrated within their surrounding social landscape, expressed themselves in different times and places along a spectrum of selective adoption, adaptation, and rejection of the artistic forms used by their neighbors. For instance, owing to a shared hostility toward pagan idolatry, both communities in the early part of this period largely avoided figural iconography (they instead drew in limited ways upon the non-figural artistic repertoire of local Hellenistic and Roman society), but by later centuries distinctly Jewish and Christian art began to emerge and incorporate a fuller range of Greco-Roman motifs for use in a variety of communal settings.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"66 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131514225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public Sculpture and Social Practice in the Roman Empire","authors":"E. Thill","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.12","url":null,"abstract":"One of the more fruitful lines of research in recent decades has been the exploration of how Roman sculpture interacted with the lives of its contemporary viewers. This chapter employs monumental reliefs, large-scale sculptures set up in public areas by official authorities, as a case study to examine how sculpture contributed to social practice under the Roman emperors. Particular focus is given to the phenomenon of imperial portrait types, the blending of history and myth in sculpted narratives, issues of visibility, and the afterlife of some reliefs. The chapter also examines possible means of evaluating responses to relief monuments, from provincial imitations, to private copies in other media, to the written record. In the end, monumental reliefs prove an excellent means to highlight the general dissonance between ancient and modern perceptions of sculpture.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"103 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124093253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iconography and Roman Religion","authors":"K. Rask","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.20","url":null,"abstract":"Roman iconography depicts religious practices, divine figures, mortal worshippers, and beliefs about the gods. Religious imagery reflects the importance of religion in Roman conceptions of the past, the fashioning of self-identity, and discursive practices. Representations of sacred spaces and occasions often emphasize their topographic arrangement within landscapes, giving religious imagery a strong sense of place. Inside sanctuaries, decorative imagery is augmented by iconography that facilitates ritual activity, illustrates cult-specific details, and shapes the experience of visitors. Religious iconography also highlights the contested natures of artifacts as well as the ways images enacted and reacted to social tensions. Although legal experts attempted to categorize the sacrality of images and artifacts, thoughts about an image’s status were mutable and rooted in personal experience and local factors. Many sacred images possessed agentive and talismanic properties, and manifested divine powers and presence.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115530981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iconography and Style in Republican and Early Imperial Art (200 bce to 14 ce)","authors":"Dominik Maschek","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.7","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter identifies pertinent trends in the scholarship of late republican and early imperial Roman art, from the early second century bce to the end of the Augustan period. By looking at specific themes and case studies, such as mythological terracottas, historical reliefs, decorative marble statues from elite villas, so-called neoattic art, and honorific as well as funerary portraits, the essentially eclectic nature of artistic themes and styles across a range of media and materials is illustrated. Moreover, based upon these case studies, the chapter explores the relations between stylistic choice and aspects like class, society, and politics. From this it becomes clear that the systematic use of archaizing, classicizing, and Hellenistic styles in the late republican and early imperial period was deeply rooted in a vibrant community of commissioners and artists who acted under the influence of profound sociopolitical transformations in Rome, central Italy, and the wider Mediterranean.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120938498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theoretical Approaches to Roman Imagery and Iconography","authors":"C. Rowan","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.2","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter presents a selection of interdisciplinary approaches used within the study of Roman visual culture. Iconology, creolization, hybridization, and entanglement are discussed alongside the problems of ‘Romanization’. Emphasis is given to the idea that images, like objects, have a biography and live a social life. Images in this sense can have a range of meanings depending on context and user. The role of images in Roman imperialism and memory is explored, with case studies including funerary contexts, the conquest of Egypt in 30 bce, the formation of Nemausus as a colony, and the siege of Jerusalem in 70 ce.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123528334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iconography and Imagery between Rome and the Provinces","authors":"S. Lepinski, Vanessa Rousseau","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.9","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines iconography and imagery in the Roman provinces with a particular focus on decorative media in domestic contexts in the eastern Roman provinces. Specifically, we investigate how decorative ensembles in second- and third-century ce Roman-era houses, and the interplay of imagery in multiple media, further inform our comprehension of how domestic visual vocabularies from distinct cultural and social contexts in the eastern provinces might express both local and Roman identity at Ephesus and Zeugma. The chapter begins with highlighting historiographic and methodological practices and structures inherent in the study of iconography in the Roman provinces and emphasizing issues at play within these structures, such as chronology, geography, cultural continuities, and relationships between center and periphery. We further outline some of the challenges of studying and interpreting domestic ensembles (as opposed to singular monuments), which, to a degree, parallels the broader challenges in making sense of Roman imagery and iconography, including problems in establishing linear progressions and the compartmentalization by media and specialization.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"554 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122600652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Late Roman Iconography and Style","authors":"S. McFadden","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.8","url":null,"abstract":"Discussions of late Roman style and iconography sometimes tend to emphasize the liminality of visual culture in late antiquity; monuments representative of the period such as the Arch of Constantine are neither fully “classical” nor “medieval” in their form and content; hence, the instinct to compare its style and iconography with that of the past or future monuments is hard to resist. The result of this lure to dichotomize is often a focus on what a late Roman work of art is not, rather than what it is (i.e., how an artwork or monument functions in its contemporary moment). This chapter therefore presents the wall paintings from the late third- to early fourth-century domus underneath the Church of Ss. Giovanni e Paolo on the Caelian Hill in Rome as a case study of a particular moment in late Roman visuality so as to better understand how engagements with iconography and style in the context of the late Roman home activate “modern” meanings and experiences.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"133 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115260489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gems, Cameos, and Social Practice","authors":"J. Lang","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.16","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the social practice of Roman images in the form of engraved gems and cameos. They were carried along on the body of their owner, so that the way they were perceived was highly flexible. The function of the representations was thus not limited to spatially fixed contexts of perception and could potentially function in all social configurations in which their wearer interacted socially. This essay aims to consider gems and cameos as objects within social spheres of activity. The starting point is the use of the objects. This makes it possible at least to limit the social interactions into which the images were integrated. Following upon this functional approach and an overview of common pictorial motifs, examples of possible ways these representations were concretely integrated to social practices will be shown. To this end, both outwardly directed functions such as social status or affiliation with a social group as well as actor-oriented aspects such as personal commemoration or the desire for individual protection are considered.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126094351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Images and Interpretation of Africans in Roman Art and Social Practice","authors":"Sinclair W. Bell","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190850326.013.25","url":null,"abstract":"The representation of foreign cultures with manifest ethnic or “racial” differences, such as unfamiliar physical traits or exotic dress, has been a long-standing and often visceral site for human artistic expression. The visual and material culture of the Roman Empire provides an abundant record of such encounters which render visible complex formulations of ethnicity, social hierarchies, and power. The present chapter focuses on how artists represented the peoples whom Romans referred to as Aethiopians or Nubians (i.e., sub-Saharan or “Black” Africans) in different visual media, and it explores issues related to the social functions, patronage, and viewership of these works. In particular, the chapter discusses the formalized conventions, object types, and display contexts of their representations; examines the two critical axioms of their study (the philological and social historical); and maps out recent approaches to and future directions in their interpretation.","PeriodicalId":438100,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128778857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}