Tanner, J;
(2000)
Portraits, Power, and Patronage in the Late Roman Republic.
Journal of Roman Studies
, 90
18 - 50.
10.2307/300199.
PDF
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Abstract
Recent work in ancient art history has sought to move beyond formalist interpretations of works of art to a concern to understand ancient images in terms of a broader cultural, political, and historical context. In the study of late Republican portraiture, traditional explanations of the origins of verism in terms of antecedent influences — Hellenistic realism, Egyptian realism, ancestral imagines — have been replaced by a concern to interpret portraits as signs functioning in a determinate historical and political context which serves to explain their particular visual patterning. In this paper I argue that, whilst these new perspectives have considerably enhanced our understanding of the forms and meanings of late Republican portraits, they are still flawed by a failure to establish a clear conception of the social functions of art. I develop an account of portraits which shifts the interpretative emphasis from art as object to art as a medium of socio-cultural action. Such a shift in analytic perspective places art firmly at the centre of our understanding of ancient societies, by snowing that art is not merely a social product or a symbol of power relationships, but also serves to construct relationships of power and solidarity in a way in which other cultural forms cannot, and thereby transforms those relationships with determinate consequences
Type: | Article |
---|---|
Title: | Portraits, Power, and Patronage in the Late Roman Republic |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.2307/300199 |
Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/300199 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | © 2000 Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies |
Keywords: | portraits, Roman art, semiotics, social theory |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology > Institute of Archaeology Gordon Square |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/25661 |
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