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Considering Roman art as a cumulative process could help resolve a small iconographical problem. Cubiculum N in the burial hypogeum under the Via Dino Compagni in Rome (c. 350–75 ce) features a series of figure scenes referencing the exploits of the mythological hero Hercules. One of these scenes, presently entitled Hercules Slaying an Unknown Enemy, has no direct equivalent in extant Roman art and so has proved difficult to identify. This article suggests that Hercules' battle with Cacus is most likely the incident referred to here. This is because Antonine medallions and coins, and third-century Roman sarcophagi, use imagery associated with the Cacus story that collectively could have contributed to the design of the Unknown Enemy panel. Further, identifying the defeated enemy as Cacus fits in with, and indeed helps to clarify, programmatic themes and associations already established in the other figure scenes in this funerary chamber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel Tired Generations (Udas Naslein) is a novel by Abdullah Hüseyin, published in Urdu in 1963, that enables us to witness one of the important periods in the history of our country and the world. Hüseyin can be called a socialist writer considering his novel Tired Generations. In his work, the author wants to convey to the reader the environment his country is in as a result of its exploitation by the British. Thus, he writes his novel with the desire to announce the problems of the people to the outside world. Hüseyin's work begins with the character named Roşen Ağa, whose name is mentioned in the first chapter, explaining how he became the landowner of the region called Roşenpur, which he named after himself, and a brief description of Roşenpur. In Roşenpur, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians live as a community, respectful of each other's religious and cultural values. Although they all have different religious and political views, their social structures, economic activities and lifestyles do not conflict with each other's human values. This depiction of Roşenpur drawn by Abdullah Hüseyin is a miniature of India of the period. In the work; Economic difficulties, political impotence, understanding the negative effects of the longstanding exploitation system and war on the people, and the factors that led the country to the independence process will be conveyed through structural and thematic fiction. Structural elements in the work; time, place, plot, point of view and cast of characters. Thematic elements are; It will be explained with prominent examples in the work through the concepts of class difference, exploitation order, war, independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following pages focus on the domestic cult in the province of Thrace, with an emphasis on the use of plastic monuments in the cult practices. Complexes from urban and extraurban environments are examined, the types of monuments and their combination are discussed and the common features of the commented complexes are highlighted. In conclusion the specificities of the domestic cult in Thrace in relation to evidence from other parts of the Roman empire are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dolphin motif on the ship-shaped oil lamp treasured in the Museum of Smederevo (4th century AD) has complex iconography, multi-layered and complex symbolism, and a long history. This article presents and explains how its iconography and meaning were gradually formed and developed in ancient Greek and Roman art, as well as the peculiarities of its gradual transformation into a Christian symbol. It is found that the context of the appearance of the dolphin motif in art during different epochs is not a mere coincidence, but the expression of a clear intention on the part of particularly learned artists and commissioners of works of art. Since there are no written records of this motif that would explain its iconography and meaning, and since the motif itself is by nature very hermetic, and at the same time very rare, the characteristic context of the appearance of the dolphin motif in art is also a decisive parameter for analyzing its meaning and its gradual formation.

The article focuses on the recent exhibition "Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii" at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Topics include the interpretation of landscapes in Roman art, the blurring of categories like pastoral and mythic representations, and the nuanced examination of the concept of "landscape" itself and this exhibition challenged viewers' perceptions of reality, prompting reflections on the relationship between humanity and the natural environment.

The article reviews the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts newly revitalized galleries featuring their renowned collection of Greek and Roman art having Graeco-Roman gods and goddesses, Byzantine Empire, Early Greek art, and Roman portraiture.

The paper provides a brief overview of art export regulations in the Mediterranean region from the 19th century to the laws adopted in the 1920s and 1930s. It then focuses on the German law of 1919 requiring works of art that were predominantly privately owned and of outstanding value to be entered in a register, the so-called List of Nationally Important Artworks. Once the works were listed in this index, they were subject to authorization for export. Despite the high importance the National Socialists attributed to Greek and Roman art as an eternal art, only one percent of the artworks that were classified as nationally valuable were from ancient periods. The instrumentalization of the export regulation through the National Socialist regime is illustrated by the example of Albert Lévy's collection of antiquities in Hamburg. For provenance research, it is essential to determine how laws were extended, applied, bypassed, or overruled during National Socialism and, thus, instrumentalized as a means of state power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author introduces her art project called Marble, which addresses the artistic tradition of the city of Rome, Italy which is famous for its cultural heritage. She refers to themes portrayed by traditional Roman art such as a depressed generation and living in a city characterized by contradiction, youth unemployment, economic crisis and backward mentality of society. She presents examples of her illustrations of Roman people with themes like poverty, depression, homophobia and misogyny.

This paper examines a specific historical context of the virtual reality (VR), commonly associated with contemporary society, in order to consider its lineage. It sets up an argument that identifies archaeological examples, which worked with subjective perceptions of space, as predecessors to the digital technologies familiar in the 21st century context. While the paper acknowledges the use of VR representation throughout history and around the world, the focus will be on key Roman villas, specifically on their frescos, and the importance of these immersion spaces in Roman society for reasons that approach both the social and introspective. As technology is not a term merely beholden to the digital, encompassing major revolutionary human advancements such as language or agriculture, the paper examines the historical technologies, i.e. the representational techniques, that produced virtual realities and immersive environments of the past. It uses the Ancient Roman context to illustrate the relationship between representation, subject(s), and society, which can be examined from a historical context and further applied to the contemporary.

This critical account of the art studios of what was once the Roman art district, visited by the Alcott sisters during their stay in Rome in winter 1870-71, casts light on a vivid, cosmopolitan art scene through micro-biographies of the American literary sculptors trained at the school of Thorvaldsen and Canova. Among them, the unprecedented freedom experienced in Rome by the community of American sculptresses led by Charlotte Cushman contributed to their professional emancipation while producing marble representations of their republican and abolitionist values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of art in the twentieth century reveals many and varied affinities with roman art, both formal and spiritual, especially for the painters of the Second School of Paris and the non-figuration. However, it would be more correct to speak of "sentimental affinities" because this story features artists and thinkers for whom the essential stake is to renew links with the public, to nourish modern man from within in a world to be rebuilt.

This essay explores a Roman triumphal monument put up at the heart of Rome by the triumphator Lucullus in the 1st c. BCE, and its Imperial afterlife after the fall of the Republic. We know this monument, a Greek statue of Hercules dying in torment from the poisoned robe sent him by his consort,  from a description in Pliny's Natural History; strong themes of the discussion are how Pliny interprets works of art and history, and addresses the physical city of Rome. The monument had to be put up again twice, by Lucullus' son with the Roman Senate, then by a magistrate, and each of those phases had their own meanings; the inscriptions described in Pliny afford a chance to explore relations between text and image. Accounting for the varied and even contradictory sorts of appeal made by this display of pain, for this particular hero, is key to any full exploration of how Lucullus' Hercules could be an exemplary Roman monument, and one which could stand in Pliny's day for the age of the Republic itself.

The collection of early to mid-Roman glasses from the Kom el-Dikka site in Alexandria has been augmented by new finds from the excavation of substantial remains of Roman domestic architecture (Houses FA and FB) in Sector F in the central part of the site. The range of vessel forms in this new set is not extensive, and shapes known from previous investigations in this sector are repeated to a degree. The most noteworthy contribution is the new data on colourless glassware of the period, a category that has hitherto been represented by a rather limited number of finds from the excavations, and which constitutes key evidence of artisanal activities in the final occupation phase of the Roman houses here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cupids depicted in the early fourth-century CE mosaics of the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily are marked with a V on their foreheads; this has been explained as a symbol connected to a workshop. I adduce evidence from Roman literature and from the artistic tradition of Cupid in Roman art that suggests the mark is, in fact, the stigma, a tattoo regularly applied by the Romans to people convicted of serious crimes. This adds a new iconographic component to the well-known artistic repertoire of Cupid Punished in Roman art. I suggest ways in which the motif may have functioned in the context of the iconography of the villa's mosaics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a head for a young warrior. It is kept in the Graeco-Roman Museum at Alexandria (Inv.No.3244). It is carved in white marble and measures 25 cm. The dimension of the head indicates that once it belonged to a life size statue. The head is dressed in tightly strapped Attic helmet. The face is highly polished. His facial features indicate that it was dedicated to a young warrior. Breccia and Maehler suggested that this beautiful head representing a Roman soldier. This point of view is based on the helmet which was a military attribute. The head was dated to 180-190 A.D. Again, this suggestion is based on the similarity between our helmet and a helmet which is represented on a sarcophagus at the Louvre Museum (Ma.2119). This head owes much to the influence of the imperial sculpture of the Antonine age; especially the age of Commodus. It also reveals the influence of the classical sculptures of the fifth and fourth century B.C. This theory is reasonable, thought the Hellenic forms were common in the second century A.D.

The history of art in the twentieth century reveals many and varied affinities with roman art, both formal and spiritual, especially for the painters of the Second School of Paris and the non-figuration. However, it would be more correct to speak of "sentimental affinities" because this story features artists and thinkers for whom the essential stake is to renew links with the public, to nourish modern man from within in a world to be rebuilt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that abstract colouristic effects were favoured in the arts of ancient Rome in a manner long overlooked. Taking the wall paintings of Cubiculum B from the Villa Farnesina as a case in point, the article demonstrates that these images display an interest in interlocking planes of colour and shape that might be described as formalist. It juxtaposes this visual evidence with overlooked passages in ancient texts to explore how such effects were conceptualized in ancient Roman thought. What emerges is a model of aesthetic value that foregrounds terpnopoietic planar effects of colour and shape above those of mimetic representation – so long revered as the most important artistic practice theorized in the classical world. This paradigm of visual value is employed in relation to both figural and non‐figural works alike. The absence of these surface effects in the standard narrative of classical art becomes testimony to that narrative's limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years archaeologists have put forward explanations of the design and impact of mythological and allegorical scenes in mosaics as part of elite Roman visual culture. While scenes of labor have served as evidence to accompany archaeological data on rural life, depictions of labor have received comparatively less attention as part of Roman ideological structures. Through an analysis of mosaics of the imperial period, this article demonstrates the value of adapting Timothy Ingold's concept of 'taskscape' for explaining shared similarities in the communication strategies underlying depictions of agricultural work in Roman art and showcases an approach to the Roman economy rooted in this body of anthropological theory. Elites were able to reinforce normative values about the agricultural world by controlling not just what was seen, but what was not seen. Their mosaics present certain generic and hidden views of work that allowed fellow elites to use their own imaginations to continually 'fill in the gaps' and reinforce their control over agricultural production, a strategy that endured across the Roman world for generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byron's interest in the classical past is manifest throughout his life and work. Alongside citations from and references to a remarkable catalogue of writers, thinkers, and historical figures, we also have extensive poetic responses to classical places, classical architecture, and to Greek and Roman art and sculpture. Yet it is clear that Byron's classical pretentions are by no means underpinned by a thorough grasp of classical languages. His Greek in particular was extremely poor, and his Latin compositions barely better than the average eighteenth-century schoolboy's. As I shall go on to demonstrate, this does not mean that attending to those moments when he does stray into classical allusion or composition is uninteresting, but it is Latin and not Greek that Byron engages with most frequently. Specifically, Byron's less than proper Latin becomes a means by which he negotiates less than proper subject matter in his poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the field of oriental art historical studies at the University of Vienna in Austria. Topics covered include the divide in the art historical teaching at the university that started with the appointment of Josef Strzygowski in 1909, Strzygowski's book "Orient oder Rom," where he contested Rome-centred historiographies, and the transformations of oriental art historical scholarship through the university's other scholars.

The asàrotos òikos or “unswept floor” is a decorative theme found in Roman mosaics. The theme depicts scraps of food along other items, as if scattered across the room’s floor. According to Pliny the theme was first created by Sosus in Pergamon. The mosaic Pliny is referring to was never discovered; however, later Roman variations on this theme were discovered in both Italy and Tunisia. This article seeks to examine the changes made to the asàrotos òikos motif when it transitions from centre to periphery and from the first to the sixth century CE. This article explores the functions and meanings the theme has held in Roman thought during the first and second century CE, the change in perception and use of the theme during the third century in the provincial Roman towns of North Africa, the influence of the theme on Early Christian art – both in style and iconography, and the new meanings possibly assigned to the theme upon its later use in a Byzantine basilica.

Ephemeral architecture was the antithesis of the permanent buildings typical of the 'Fascism of stone', and yet many architects took advantage of this paradox to create an imaginary Rome. A widespread use of ephemeral structures was made around 1938, during the Mostra Augustea della Romanità and Hitler's state visit to Italy, in order to support a political programme that marked the totalitarian turn in the Fascist regime after the foundation of the empire and aimed at strengthening the alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Relying on methodologies of particular relevance to Roman art history and on various sources unknown to date, this paper investigates the relationships between ephemeral architecture and romanità. The case study is a monumental tribune built in via dei Trionfi that inevitably suffered a damnatio memoriae: a combination of classicizing and futuristic decorations, it looked back at ancient Rome and, at the same time, highlighted the Fascist regime's aspirations to might and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a relatively unexplored corpus of papyrus drawings made for and used by artisans engaged in the production of textiles in late Roman Egypt. The intentional indeterminacy in such sketches enabled both artistic flexibility and replicative (if not mass) production. An understanding of their employment in the fabrication of items both functional and decorative bears on far-reaching questions concerning replication, aesthetics, and artistic agency in Roman art generally, as well as on our understanding of the concept of the schema in the history of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figure of the Titan Atlas is one of the most prolific in the history of art, and one of the most stereotypical in iconography. The most common representation is the titan holding the celestial vault on his shoulders. In the case of ancient Greek is generally represented with the passage in which Heracles replaces him while he goes looking for the apples of the Hesperides. It is a very prolific image in art. Although, studies that attempt to mark the turning point in this type of iconography of a mature and bearded man, kneeling on the ground and holding the celestial vault on his shoulders are scarce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early nineteenth century the link between Rome and Sicilian artists gets more and more intense. In the Capital young artists came into contact with the Italian and European artistic innovations, but they also chose Rome for political, social and existential reasons. The bond with the Island will always be clear and strong to the point of living Sicily as a metaphor of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Museum in Warsaw holds a diverse collection of glass gems, both ancient and modern. One of these, a specimen depicting a dying Niobid supported by his sister, belongs to a wider group of objects scattered throughout various European museums. Such gems were mainly produced during the 1st century BC and their decoration is derived from a fragment of a relief carved by Pheidias on the statue of Zeus in Olympia which portrays the massacre of the Niobids. The fact that these gems were made of glass indicates that objects with such decorations were appreciated and popular. The myth of Niobe, in both Greek and Roman art, served multiple purposes highlighted by the choice of the story's motives most often used in decorations. However, the reason for the use of this particular fragment of Pheidias's relief to decorate gems as well as their popularity require additional explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greek myth of Niobe was known in the ancient world both by literary sources and visual representations. Both in Ancient Greece and in Ancient Rome, the myth was represented, alongside a variety forms of art, in funerary art, but in a different manner during each period of time. In Ancient Greece, the myth was represented on Apulian and South Italian vases, portraying the finale scene of the myth: Niobe’s petrification. In Ancient Rome, a shift is visible: the portrayal of the scene of the killing of Niobe’s children on sarcophagi reliefs. The aim of this paper is to follow the iconography of each culture and to understand the reason for the shift in representation, while comparing the two main media forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that iconographic studies are recognized as an important tool for understanding antiquity, there are few references among scholars of Roman window glass to this field. This paper, which analyses images in reliefs, mosaics and wall paintings, demonstrates how representations of window glass are more common than hitherto argued. The data from these analyses provide important information about the chronology, use and availability of this type of material, adding to the small body of knowledge regarding an object little understood in scholarly circles, although windows are believed to be one of the most widespread applications of glass in the Roman era.

As the Latin phrase in the above title says, the passage from paganism to Christianity does not arise ex machina, but it is also prepared through the continuous experience of religiosity in pagan contexts. There is a preparation that is said to be evangelical, because little by little and in many ways, the Christian Good News reaches the whole Roman Empire. This is visible in the evolution of classical art, especially in the mosaic, with the best examples, among other significant myths, of Orpheus’s story. Hence the importance of new approaches to classical myths, namely in their representation in opus musivum.

The antiquities trade is the subject of contentious debate. The anti-trade position stems from a long unquestioned stance within academia that private ownership of antiquities inherently results in archaeological site destruction and the loss of valuable data. However, there is little data to support this notion. It also ignores the enormous contributions to our shared knowledge of the past that have been made through art collecting and museum acquisitions. The narrative that the destruction of ancient sites is directly tied to Western demand for ancient art is overly simplistic. Despite the ongoing destruction in the Middle East and North African region, virtually no artifacts from there have entered the Western trade in recent years. Opportunistic treasure hunting by desperate locals and intentional destruction of ancient objects for religious reasons cannot be curtailed by increased legislation in Western nations. Fetishizing mundane ubiquitous antiquities as sacrosanct objects of great national importance that must be retained within modern borders in a globalized world and demanding criminalization of the legitimate international art trade are counterproductive. In many archaeologically rich countries, antiquities are regarded as items to sell to foreigners at best or sacrilegious objects to be destroyed at worst. The free trade in cultural objects is itself an institution that needs to be protected. An open legitimate trade in antiquities is now more than ever necessary to ensure the preservation and dissemination of worldwide cultural property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of early modern "scientia civilis" focus on two main understandings of that concept: the juridical and the rhetorical. This article focuses on another way of thinking about civil science in the early modern period, the origins and development of which are in the Aristotelian commentary tradition. This article begins with political science in Aristotle then turns to the works of commentators from Albert the Great in the thirteenth century, to the Oxford philosopher John Case in the late sixteenth. It ends on ways that this history offers new perspectives on Hobbes's science of politics, and on the broader historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]