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Historians constantly wrestle with uncertainty, never more so than when attempting quantification, yet the field has given little attention to the nature of uncertainty and strategies for managing it. This volume proposes a powerful new approach to uncertainty in ancient history, drawing on techniques widely used in the social and natural sciences. It shows how probability-based techniques used to manage uncertainty about the future or the present can be applied to uncertainty about the past. A substantial introduction explains the use of probability to represent uncertainty. The chapters that follow showcase how the technique can offer leverage on a wide range of problems in ancient history, from the incidence of expropriation in the Classical Greek world to the money supply of the Roman empire.
Framed by tensions between figural sculpture experienced in the round and its translation into two-dimensional representations, Animating the Antique explores enthralling episodes in a history of artistic and aesthetic encounters. Moving across varied locations—among them Rome, Florence, Naples, London, Dresden, and Paris—Sarah Betzer explores a history that has yet to be written: that of the Janus-faced nature of interactions with the antique by which sculptures and beholders alike were caught between the promise of animation and the threat of mortification. Examining the traces of affective and transformative sculptural encounters, the book takes off from the decades marked by the arch...
Across the Roman Empire, ubiquitous archaeological, art historical, and literary evidence attests to the significance of bathing for Romans' routines and relationships. Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae presents a detailed analysis of the extensive decoration of the best preserved of these bathing complexes, the Baths of Caracalla (inaugurated 216 CE).
In 2008, the Berlin Antikensammlung initiated a project with the J. Paul Getty Museum to conserve a group of ancient funerary vases from southern Italy. Monumental in scale and richly decorated, these magnificent vessels were discovered in hundreds of fragments in the early nineteenth century at Ceglie, near Bari. Acquired by a Bohemian diplomat, they were reconstructed in the Neapolitan workshop of Raffaele Gargiulo, who was considered one of the leading restorers of antiquities in Europe. His methods exemplify what was referred to as “une perfection dangereuse,” an approach to reassembly and repainting that made it difficult to distinguish what was ancient and what was modern. Bringing...
The phenomenon of iconoclasm, expressed through hostile actions towards images, has occurred in many different cultures throughout history. The destruction and mutilation of images is often motivated by a blend of political and religious ideas and beliefs, and the distinction between various kinds of ’iconoclasms’ is not absolute. In order to explore further the long and varied history of iconoclasm the contributors to this volume consider iconoclastic reactions to various types of objects, both in the very recent and distant past. The majority focus on historical periods but also on history as a backdrop for image troubles of our own day. Development over time is a central question in t...
There is hardly a more controversial issue in the study of ancient religion than Orphism. More than two centuries of debate have not closed the subject, since new evidence and divergent approaches have kept appearing regularly. This volume sheds light on the most relevant pieces of evidence for ancient Orphism, collected in the recent edition by Alberto Bernabé. It contains 65 short new studies on Orphic fragments by leading international scholars who comment one of the most controversial phenomena in Antiquity from a plurality of perspectives. Readers will acquire a global vision of the multiple dimensions of the Orphic tradition, as well as many new insights into particular Orphic fragments.
The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum-buried during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79, then rediscovered in 1750-contained a large collection of bronze and marble statuary and busts. Before they were published or exhibited, the sculptures were restored so as to appear whole: it is thus that they helped to shape early modern tastes in classical sculpture. The book describes the nature of the ancient sculptures and their impact on the modern public. Their chance discovery affected the interpretation of the statues-their styles and subjects-over the course of the next 250 years. The ancient sculptures were copied extensively in reproductions of various sizes and patinas. The author traces t...
This handbook has two purposes: it is intended (1) as a handbook of Etruscology or Etruscan Studies, offering a state-of-the-art and comprehensive overview of the history of the discipline and its development, and (2) it serves as an authoritative reference work representing the current state of knowledge on Etruscan civilization. The organization of the volume reflects this dual purpose. The first part of the volume is dedicated to methodology and leading themes in current research, organized thematically, whereas the second part offers a diachronic account of Etruscan history, culture, religion, art & archaeology, and social and political relations and structures, as well as a systematic treatment of the topography of the Etruscan civilization and sphere of influence.
This volume is the first comprehensive collection of texts on the conservation of art and architecture to be published in the English language. Designed for students of art history as well as conservation, the book consists of forty-six texts, some never before translated into English and many originally published only in obscure or foreign journals. The thirty major art historians and scholars represented raise questions such as when to restore, what to preserve, and how to maintain aesthetic character. Excerpts have been selected from the following books and essays: John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture; Bernard Berenson, Aesthetics and History in the Visual Arts; Clive Bell, The Aesthetic Hypothesis; Cesare Brandi, Theory of Restoration; Kenneth Clark, Looking at Pictures; Erwin Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline; E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion; Marie Cl. Berducou, The Conservation of Archaeology; and Paul Philippot, Restoration from the Perspective of the Social Sciences. The fully illustrated book also contains an annotated bibliography and an index.
Since the Renaissance, it has been generally accepted that almost all Roman sculptures depicting ideal figures were copies of Greek originals. This text traces the origin of this idea to the academic belief in the mythical perfection of now-lost Greek art.