Using both textual and iconographic sources, this richly illustrated book examines the representations of the body in Greek Old and Middle Comedy, how it was staged, perceived, and imagined, particularly in Athens, Magna Graecia, and Sicily. The study also aims to refine knowledge of the various connections between Attic comedy and comic vases from South Italy and Sicily (the so-called 'phlyax vases'). After introducing comic texts and comedy-related vase-paintings in the regional contexts, The Comic Body in Ancient Greek Theatre and Art, 440-320 BCE considers the generic features of the comic body, characterized as it is by a specific ugliness and a constant motion. It also explores how costumes -masks, padding, phallus, clothing, accessories- and gestures contribute to the characters' visual identity in relation with speech : it analyzes the cultural, social, aesthetic, and theatrical conventions by which spectators decipher the body. This study thus leads to a re-examination of the modalities of comic mimesis, in particular when addressing sexual codes in cross-dressing scenes which reveal the artifice of the fictional body. It also sheds light on how comic poets make use of the scenic or imaginary representations of the bodies of those who are targets of political, social, or intellectual satire. There is a particular emphasis on body movements, where the book not only deals with body language and the dramatic function of comic gesture, but also with how words confer a kind of poetic and unreal motion to the body.

This book provides a brief, clear account of the main developments in the history of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman architecture, from the earliest times to the foundation of Constantinople. It contains 135 drawings and 24 plates. Professor Robertson has produced a really great handbook; one that has become the standard general work, in English, or perhaps in any language, on its subject. It has not only accuracy, attention to detail and scholarship - these qualities we would expect - it has clarity, breadth of treatment and what can be called architectural soundness.

Ancient Greek sculpture seems to have a timeless quality - provoking reactions that may range from awe to alienation. Yet it was a particular product of its age: and to know how and why it was once created is to embark upon an understanding of its 'Classic' status. In this richly illustrated and carefully written survey, encompassing works from c.700 BC to the end of antiquity, Nigel Spivey expounds not only the social function of Greek sculpture but also its aesthetic and technical achievement. Fresh approaches are reconciled with traditional modes of study as the connoisseurship of this art is sympathetically unravelled, while source material and historical narratives are woven into detailed explanations, putting the art into its proper context. Greek Sculpture is the ideal textbook for students of classics, classical civilisation, art history and archaeology - and an accessible account for all interested readers.

What happens to us when we die? What might the afterlife look like? For the ancient Greeks, the dead lived on, overseen by Hades in the Underworld. We read of famous sinners, such as Sisyphus, forever rolling his rock, and the fierce guard dog Kerberos, who was captured by Herakles. For mere mortals, ritual and religion offered possibilities for ensuring a happy existence in the beyond, and some of the richest evidence for beliefs about death comes from southern Italy, where the local Italic peoples engaged with Greek beliefs. Monumental funerary vases that accompanied the deceased were decorated with consolatory scenes from myth, and around forty preserve elaborate depictions of Hades's domain. For the first time in over four decades, these compelling vase paintings are brought together in one volume, with detailed commentaries and ample illustrations. The catalogue is accompanied by a series of essays by leading experts in the field, which provides a framework for understanding these intriguing scenes and their contexts. Topics include attitudes toward the afterlife in Greek ritual and myth, inscriptions on leaves of gold that provided guidance for the deceased; funerary practices and religious beliefs in Apulia, and the importance accorded to Orpheus and Dionysos. Drawing from a variety of textual and archaeological sources, this volume is an essential source for anyone interested in religion and belief in the ancient Mediterranean.

We often assume that works of visual art are meant to be seen. Yet that assumption may be a modern prejudice. The ancient world - from China to Greece, Rome to Mexico - provides many examples of statues, paintings, and other images that were not intended to be visible. Instead of being displayed, they were hidden, buried, or otherwise obscured. In this third volume in the Visual Conversations in Art & Archaeology series, leading scholars working at the intersection of archaeology and the history of art address the fundamental question of art's visibility. What conditions must be met, what has to be in place, for a work of art to be seen at all? The answer is both historical and methodological; it concerns ancient societies and modern disciplines, and encompasses material circumstances, perceptual capacities, technologies of visualization, protocols of classification, and a great deal more. The emerging field of archaeological art history is uniquely suited to address such questions. Intrinsically comparative, this approach cuts across traditional ethnic, religious, and chronological categories to confront the academic present with the historical past. The goal is to produce a new art history that is at once cosmopolitan in method and global in scope, and in doing so establish new ways of seeing - new conditions of visibility - for shared objects of study.

The Hellenistic Period witnessed striking new developments in art, literature and science. This volume addresses a particularly vibrant area of innovation: the study of animals and the natural world. While Aristotle and his followers had revolutionized fields such as zoology and botany during the fourth century BC, these disciplines took on exciting new directions during Hellenistic times. Kings imported exotic species into their royal capitals from faraway lands. Travel writers described unusual creatures that they had never previously encountered. And buyers from a range of social levels chose works of art featuring animals and plants to decorate their palaces, houses and tombs. While textual sources shed some light on these developments, the central premise of Art, Science and the Natural World in the Ancient Mediterranean is that our surviving artistic evidence permits a fuller understanding. Accordingly, the study brings together a rich body of visual material that invites new observations on how and why knowledge of the natural world became so important during this period. It is suggested that this cultural phenomenon affected many different groups in society: from kings in Alexandria and Pergamon to provincial aristocrats in the Levant, and from the Julio-Claudian imperial family to prosperous homeowners in Pompeii. By analysing the works of art produced for these individuals, a vivid picture emerges of this remarkable aspect of ancient culture.

Landscape has been a key theme in world archaeology and trans-cultural art history over the last half century, particularly in the study of painting in art history and in all questions of human intervention and the placement of monuments in the natural world within archaeology. However, the representation of landscape has been rather less addressed in the scholarship of the archaeologically-accessed visual cultures of the ancient world. The kinds of reliefs, objects, and paintings discussed here have a significant purchase on matters concerned with landscape and space in the visual sphere, but were discovered within archaeological contexts and by means of excavation. Through case studies focused on the invention of wilderness imagery in ancient China, the relation of monuments to landscape in ancient Greece, the place of landscape painting in Mesoamerican Maya art, and the construction of sacred landscape across Eurasia between Stonehenge and the Silk Road via Pompeii, this book emphasises the importance of thinking about models of landscape in ancient art, as well as the value of comparative approaches in underlining core aspects of the topic. Notably, it explores questions of space, both actual and conceptual, including how space is configured through form and representation.

The Iranian Expanse explores how kings in the ancient Iranian world utilized the built and natural environment-everything from royal cities and paradise gardens, to hunting enclosures and fire temples-to form and contest Iranian cultural memory, royal identity, and sacred cosmologies over a thousand years of history. Although scholars have often noted startling continuities between the traditions of the Achaemenids and the art and architecture of medieval or Early Modern Islam, the tumultuous millennium between Alexander and Islam has routinely been downplayed or omitted. The Iranian Expanse delves into this fascinating period, examining royal culture and identity as something built and shaped by strategic changes to architectonic and urban spaces and the landscape of Western Asia. Canepa shows how the Seleucids, Arsacids, and Sasanians played a transformative role in developing a new Iranian royal culture that deeply influenced not only early Islam, but also the wider Persianate world of the Il-Khans, Safavids, Timurids, and Mughals.

Larinum, a pre-Roman town in the modern region of Molise, underwent a unique transition from independence to municipal status when it received Roman citizenship in the 80s BCE shortly after the Social War. Its trajectory during this period illuminates complex processes of cultural, social, and political change associated with the Roman conquest throughout the Italian peninsula in the first millennium BCE. This book uses all the available evidence to create a site biography of Larinum from 400 BCE to 100 CE, with a focus on the urban transformation that occurred there during the Roman conquest. This study is distinctive in utilizing many different types of evidence: literary sources (including the pro Cluentio), settlement patterns, inscriptions, monuments and artifacts. It highlights the importance of local isolated variability in studies of Roman conquest, and provides a narrative that supplements larger works on this theme.

How do archaeologists and artists reimagine what life was like during the Greek Bronze Age? How do contemporary conditions influence the way we understand the ancient past? This innovative book considers two imaginative restorations of the ancient world that test the boundaries of interpretation and invention by bringing together the discovery of Minoan culture by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941) and the work of the Turner Prize-winning video artist Elizabeth Price (b. 1966). Featured essays examine Evans's interpretation and restoration of the Knossos palace and present fresh photography of Minoan artifacts and archival photographs of the dig alongside beautiful, previously unpublished watercolors and drawings by the archaeological illustrators and restorers who worked on the site: Emile Gillieron pere(1850-1924), Emile Gillieron fils (1885-1939), Piet de Jong (1887-1967), and others. An interview with Price explores how her attraction to the Sir Arthur Evans Archive became the basis for her commissioned video installation at the University of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and offers insight into her creative practice. Exhibition dates: October 5, 2017-January 7, 2018

This volume presents a vivid record in words and pictures of a dig on the Anatolian borders of Mesopotamia that ended recently after nearly two decades. Designed in the format of a survey book, Ziyaret Tepe: Exploring the Anatolian frontier of the Assyrian Empire captures the sense of intimacy and immediacy of the project. Ziyaret Tepe, the ancient city of Tushan, was a provincial capital of the Assyrian Empire, in its day the greatest empire the world had ever seen. The excavations captured in this innovative book uncovered the palace of the governor, the mansions of the elite and the barracks of the rank and file, charting the history of the empire from its expansion in the early 9th century BC to its fall three centuries years later. The great mound of Ziyaret Tepe, with its accumulated layers rising 22 metres above the surrounding plain, is a record of thousands of years of human occupation. In the course of 18 seasons of fieldwork, both the lower town and the mound looming up over it yielded the secrets of Tushan, today in southeast Turkey, near the border with Syria. This has always been frontier country. Elaborate wall paintings, a hoard of luxury items burned in a cremation ritual 2,800 years ago, and a cuneiform tablet that hints at a previously unknown language are among the team's exceptional finds. The story of the project is told by the specialists who dedicated years of their lives to it. Geophysicists, ceramicists, readers of cuneiform, experts in weaving, board games and Neo-Assyrian politics joined archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, archaeobotanists and many others. But this is no dry field book of dusty digging. Both accessible and scholarly, it is a lively, copiously illustrated record of excavations involving the whole team, a compelling demonstration of the collaboration - the science, artistry and imaginative reconstruction - that makes modern archaeology so absorbing.

This concise, beautifully illustrated guide explores the enigmatic Franks Casket, carved from whalebone in 8th century northern England, and decorated with scenes from tales both pagan and Christian, as well as runic inscriptions. Leslie Webster helps the general reader to make sense of its iconography and meaning, the processes of its manufacture, and its somewhat confused history - it was rediscovered in modern times in France, whilst one panel remains in Florence.

The Ashmolean Museum is fortunate in having the most comprehensive British collection of the art of the Indian subcontinent outside London. Especially strong in sculpture, this rich representation of Indian art from prehistory to the twentieth century has come about through the generosity of our benefactors over more than three centuries. The Museum's first major Indian sculpture acquisition, a stone Pala-style Vishnu image of the eleventh century, was given in 1686 by Sir William Hedges, a governor of the East India Company in Bengal. From the late nineteenth century, a substantial core of the present collection was assembled at the University's former Indian Institute Museum (1897-1962), precursor of the Department of Eastern Art, which opened within the Ashmolean in 1963. Since that date many more Indian objects of all periods have been acquired by gift, bequest or purchase.

Located at the intersection of trade routes from central Africa, the ancient Near East and the Classical world, ancient Nubia ruled the entire Nile Valley at the height of its power in the eighth century B.C. Its neighbor and frequent rival Egypt called it "the gold lands" because its territories held such an abundance of the precious metal, and because its inhabitants produced some of the most finely crafted jewelry of the ancient world. This book features over 100 adornments and personal accessories from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which houses the finest collection of Nubian jewelry outside Khartoum. The first comprehensive introduction to the sophisticated jewels of this great empire, it reveals how Nubian artisans employed techniques that would not be reinvented in Europe for another two thousand years, and how the original owners valued such possessions not only for their inherent beauty, but also because they were imbued with magical meanings. Exquisite photography and an authoritative history written by leading experts make this book essential for both jewelry aficionados and anyone interested in the great cultures of the ancient world.

Biography is one of the most widespread literary genres worldwide. Biographies and autobiographies of actors, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, and other famous figures have never been more prominent in book shops and publishers' catalogues. This Handbook offers a wide-ranging, multi-authored survey on biography in Antiquity from its earliest representatives to Late Antiquity. It aims to be a broad introduction and a reference tool on the one hand, and to move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art on the other. To this end, it addresses conceptual questions about this sprawling genre, offers both in-depth readings of key texts and diachronic studies, and deals with the reception of ancient biography across multiple eras up to the present day. In addition, it takes a wide approach to the concept of ancient biography by examining biographical depictions in different textual and visual media (epigraphy, sculpture, architecture) and by providing outlines of biographical developments in ancient and late antique cultures other than Graeco-Roman. Highly accessible, this book aims at a broad audience ranging from specialists to newcomers in the field. Chapters provide English translations of ancient (and modern) terminology and citations. In addition, all individual chapters are concluded by a section containing suggestions for further reading on their specific topic.

Figurines are objects of handling. As touchable objects, they engage the viewer in different ways from flat art, whether relief sculpture or painting. Unlike the voyeuristic relationship of viewing a neatly framed pictorial narrative as if from the outside, the viewer as handler is always potentially and without protection within the narrative of figurines. As such, they have potential for a potent, even animated, agency in relation to those who use them. This volume concerns figurines as archaeologically-attested materials from literate cultures with surviving documents that have no direct links of contiguity, appropriation, or influence in relation to each other. It is an attempt to put the category of the figurine on the table as a key conceptual and material problematic in the art history of antiquity. It does so through comparative juxtaposition of close-focused chapters drawn from deep art-historical engagement with specific ancient cultures - Chinese, pre-Columbian Mesoamerican, and Greco-Roman. It encourages comparative conversation across the disciplines that constitute the art history of the ancient world through finding categories and models of discourse that may offer fertile ground for comparison and antithesis. It extends the rich and astute literature on prehistoric figurines into understanding the figurine in historical contexts, where literary texts and documents, inscriptions, or surviving terminologies can be adduced alongside material culture. At stake are issues of figuration and anthropomorphism, miniaturization and portability, one-off production and replication, and substitution and scale at the interface of archaeology and art history.

John J. Dobbins, Professor of Roman Art and Archaeology, taught at the University of Virginia in the Department of Art from 1978 until his retirement in 2019. His legacy of research and pedagogy is explored in A Quaint & Curious Volume: Essays in Honor of John J. Dobbins. Professor Dobbins' research in the field of Roman art and archaeology spans the geographical and chronological limits of the Roman Empire, from Pompeii to Syria, and Etruria to Spain. This volume demonstrates some of his wide-reaching interests, expressed through the research of his former graduate students. Several essays examine the city of Pompeii and cover the topics of masonry analysis, re-examinations of streets and drains, and analyses of the heating capacity of baths in Pompeii. Beyond Pompeii, the archaeological remains of bakeries are employed to elucidate labor specialization in the Late Roman period across the Mediterranean basin. Collaborations between Professor Dobbins and his former students are also explored, including a pioneering online numismatic database and close examination of sculpture and mosaics, including expressions of identity and patronage through case studies of the Ara Pacis and mosaics at Antioch-on-the-Orontes. A Quaint & Curious Volume not only demonstrates John Dobbins' scholarly legacy, but also presents new readings of archaeological data and art, illustrating the impact that one professor can have on the wider field of Roman art and archaeology through the continuing work of his students.

This exciting new look at Classical art starts with the excavation of the buried city of Pompeii, and investigates the grandiose monuments of ancient tyrants, and the sensual beauty of Apollo and Venus. Concluding with that most influential invention of all, the human portrait, it highlights the re-discovery of Classical art in the modern world, from the treasure hunts of Renaissance Rome to scientific retrieval in the twenty-first century.

This handsomely illustrated volume is the second in a series of publications aimed at giving a broad audience deeper insight into the extensive collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Museum is famed for its Greek vases. Joan R. Mertens, Curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan, has chosen thirty-five notable examples. They reveal the variety and vitality of the refined forms and masterfully rendered scenes that characterize these works. And they demonstrate the interrelation of function, shape, technique, and subject matter that is key to understanding the rich language of Greek vases. The introduction provides valuable background information, and the entries delve into the features of each vase, incorporating brilliant color illustrations, including many arresting details. Greek vases served specific utilitarian functions, and they also afforded outstanding artists, some of whom signed their work, a medium for depicting both the details of daily existence and aspects of their gods, goddesses, and heroes. We see the garments, implements, athletic competitions, and marriage and funerary rituals of Greeks who lived from the seventh through the fourth century B.C. We see their mythological figures and stories, for instance, the goddess Athena with her helmet, spear, and shield, and the great hero Herakles, from his first exploit as a baby to his elevation as an immortal at the end of his earthly life. The exceptional group of works assembled in this volume conveys the extent to which the culture of ancient Greece is still apparent today. Urns and jars inspired by Greek models are a staple in all types of public and private spaces. The meander patterns, palmettes, and other florals that adorn ancient vases recur in all kinds of modern objects. And the concept of the hero, or superman, first formulated and given visual form in ancient Greece is integral to Western culture. How to Read Greek Vases is sure to inspire closer scrutiny of these remarkable works of art, which have survived for over two millennia to offer viewers an enlightening look into the ancient heritage of the Western world. Published in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Admonitions scroll is an internationally recognized masterpiece of narrative painting and is arguably the earliest surviving Chinese painting. Painted in ink and colour on silk and traditionally attributed to the 'founding figure' of Chinese painting, Gu Kaizhi (c.345-c.406), the scroll entered the British Museum in 1903 and has become one of its most famous objects. The scroll illustrates a poem written in AD 292 by the poet-official Zhang Hua (232-300), who was reprimanding Empress Jia (257-300) who had wantonly abandoned the Confucian-based ethical behaviour expected of court ladies, including personal sacrifice to save the emperor should he be in danger. The Admonitions scroll was painted centuries later in order to admonish a different wayward ruler - this time an emperor himself. While didactic and morally instructive, the painted scenes also reveal deep psychological insights into some of the figures as well as offer touching glimpses of court life, including in the bedchamber and a grooming session with the children. Modern scholarship holds that the Admonitions scroll dates from the sixth to eighth century AD. While it may or may not be a copy of an original work by Gu, without doubt it accurately represents a style current in his lifetime and as such represents the seminal development of the features that came to distinguish Chinese ink painting as a distinctive world tradition. The Admonitions scroll has been held in many prestigious Chinese private and imperial collections, as well as having been copied by other Chinese artists, before arriving in London over a century ago. The story of the scroll is of fascinating historical interest and this accessible and beautifully illustrated book really gets to the heart of it.

Greek painted pottery from the fourth century B.C. is one of the largest and most remarkable bodies of theatrically informed material that still survives. "Pots and Plays" is a thorough and insightful re-evaluation of over 100 Greek vases - mostly from the Greek communities of southern Italy. It demonstrates that while most paintings are not direct representations of actors or scenes, they can be interpreted as referring to theatrical performance. This comprehensive volume provides a large body of superb photographs accompanied by a picture-by-picture discussion of the vases, organized by playwright - including Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

The invention of coinage in ancient Greece provided an arena in which rival political groups struggled to imprint their views on the world. Here Leslie Kurke analyzes the ideological functions of Greek coinage as one of a number of symbolic practices that arise for the first time in the archaic period. By linking the imagery of metals and coinage to stories about oracles, prostitutes, Eastern tyrants, counterfeiting, retail trade, and games, she traces the rising egalitarian ideology of the polis, as well as the ongoing resistance of an elitist tradition to that development. The argument thus aims to contribute to a Greek "history of ideologies," to chart the ways ideological contestation works through concrete discourses and practices long before the emergence of explicit political theory.

To an elitist sensibility, the use of almost pure silver stamped with the state's emblem was a suspicious alternative to the para-political order of gift exchange. It ultimately represented the undesirable encroachment of the public sphere of the egalitarian polis. Kurke re-creates a "language of metals" by analyzing the stories and practices associated with coinage in texts ranging from Herodotus and archaic poetry to Aristotle and Attic inscriptions. She shows that a wide variety of imagery and terms fall into two opposing symbolic domains: the city, representing egalitarian order, and the elite symposium, a kind of anti-city. Exploring the tensions between these domains, Kurke excavates a neglected portion of the Greek cultural "imaginary" in all its specificity and strangeness.

Visual culture was an essential part of ancient social, religious, and political life. Appearance and experience of beings and things was of paramount importance. In Visual Power in Ancient Greece and Rome, Tonio Hoelscher explores the fundamental phenomena of Greek and Roman visual culture and their enormous impact on the ancient world, considering memory over time, personal appearance, conceptualization and representation of reality, and significant decoration as fundamental categories of art as well as of social practice. With an emphasis on public spaces such as sanctuaries, agora and forum, Hoelscher investigates the ways in which these spaces were used, viewed, and experienced in religious rituals, political manifestations, and social interaction.