Share the story of what Open Access means to you
University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.
The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Responses and Practices
Troels Myrup Kristensen and Lea Stirling, editors
You don't have access to this book. Please try to log in with your institution.
Log in
For centuries, statuary décor was a main characteristic of any city, sanctuary, or villa in the Roman world. However, from the third century CE onward, the prevalence of statues across the Roman Empire declined dramatically. By the end of the sixth century, statues were no longer a defining characteristic of the imperial landscape. Further, changing religious practices cast pagan sculpture in a threatening light. Statuary production ceased, and extant statuary was either harvested for use in construction or abandoned in place.
The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture is the first volume to approach systematically the antique destruction and reuse of statuary, investigating key responses to statuary across most regions of the Roman world. The volume opens with a discussion of the complexity of the archaeological record and a preliminary chronology of the fate of statues across both the eastern and western imperial landscape. Contributors to the volume address questions of definition, identification, and interpretation for particular treatments of statuary, including metal statuary and the systematic reuse of villa materials. They consider factors such as earthquake damage, late antique views on civic versus "private" uses of art, urban construction, and deeper causes underlying the end of the statuary habit, including a new explanation for the decline of imperial portraiture. The themes explored resonate with contemporary concerns related to urban decline, as evident in post-industrial cities, and the destruction of cultural heritage, such as in the Middle East.
-
Cover
-
Title
-
Copyright
-
Contents
-
Acknowledgments
-
Introduction
-
The Lives and Afterlives of Greek and Roman Sculpture: From Use to Refuse / Troels Myrup Kristensen and Lea Stirling
-
-
Part I. Practices of Deposition and Reuse
-
One. Metal Sculpture from Roman Britain: Scraps but Not Always Scrap / Ben Croxford
-
Two. Sculptural Deposition and Lime Kilns at Roman Villas in Italy and the Western Provinces in Late Antiquity / Beth Munro
-
Three.“Christ-Loving Antioch Became Desolate”: Sculpture, Earthquakes, and Late Antique Urban Life / Troels Myrup Kristensen
-
-
Part II. Regional Perspectives
-
Four. Old Habits Die Hard: A Group of Mythological Statuettes from Sagalassos and the Afterlife of Sculpture in Asia Minor / Ine Jacobs
-
Five. The Reuse of Ancient Sculpture in the Urban Spaces of Late Antique Athens / Nadin Burkhardt
-
Six. Crosses, Noses, Walls, and Wells: Christianity and the Fate of Sculpture in Late Antique Corinth / Amelia R. Brown
-
Seven. The Reuse of Funerary Statues in Late Antique Prestige Buildings at Ostia / Cristina Murer
-
Eight. Germans, Christians, and Rituals of Closure: Agents of Cult Image Destruction in Roman Germany / Philip Kiernan
-
Nine. The Fate of Classical Statues in Late Antique and Byzantine Sicily: The Cases of Catania and Agrigento / Denis Sami
-
Ten. The Fate of Sculpture on the Lower Danube in Late Antiquity: Preliminary Observations / Cristina-Georgeta Alexandrescu
-
-
Part III. Grand Narratives
-
Eleven. Shifting Use of a Genre: A Comparison of Statuary Décor in Homes and Baths of the Late Roman West / Lea Stirling
-
Twelve. The Disappearing Imperial Statue: Toward a Social Approach / Benjamin Anderson
-
Thirteen. The Sunset of 3D / Paolo Liverani
-
Fourteen. Travelers’ Accounts of Roman Statuary in the Near East and North Africa: From Limbo and Destruction to Museum Heaven / Michael Greenhalgh
-
-
Contributors
-
Footnotes
-
Bibliography
-
Index
Citable Link
Published: 2016
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
- 978-0-472-12182-3 (ebook)
- 978-0-472-11969-1 (hardcover)