Maiores di pietra. L'immagine della famiglia nei monumenti sepolcrali della Regio X

Abstract This article investigates the images of families on the funerary monuments of Venetia , mostly dating to the Julian-Claudian period, cross-referencing epigraphic data and integrating quantitative analysis. On these monuments, a certain codification of the significance of parentage can be identified, which emerges from the iconographic scheme and is reaffirmed by the gestures of the figures depicted, while clothes and objects help to characterize individual portraits. It is not possible to recognize consistent alterations to the meaning of the images depending on social context or the fact that some of the family members had already died at the point the monument was erected. This analysis allows us to understand the widespread trends that determined how clients portrayed their own domestic nuclei, in dialogue with the geographic and cultural contexts that they belonged to and synthesizing the family reality of the world of the living, to create an iconic model for the community of the dead.