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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Sculpture & other three-dimensional art forms > Sculpture
The study of Roman sculpture has been an essential part of the
disciplines of Art History and Classics since the eighteenth
century. From formal concerns such as Kopienkritic (copy criticism)
to social readings of plebeian and patrician art and beyond,
scholars have returned to Roman sculpture to answer a variety of
questions about Roman art, society, and history. Indeed, the field
of Roman sculptural studies encompasses not only the full
chronological range of the Roman world but also its expansive
geography, and a variety of artistic media, formats, sizes, and
functions. Exciting new theories, methods, and approaches have
transformed the specialized literature on the subject in recent
decades. Rather than creating another chronological ARCH15OXH of
representative examples of various periods, genres, and settings,
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture synthesizes current best
practices for studying this central medium of Roman art, situating
it within the larger fields of art history, classical archaeology,
and Roman studies. This volume fills the gap between introductory
textbooks-which hide the critical apparatus from the reader-and the
highly focused professional literature. The handbook conveniently
presents new technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical
approaches to the study of Roman sculpture in one reference volume
and complements textbooks and other publications that present
well-known works in the corpus. Chronologically, the volume
addresses material from the Early Republican period through Late
Antiquity. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture not only
contributes to the field of classical art and archaeology but also
provides a useful reference for classicists and historians of the
ancient world.
By 1650, the spiritual and political power of the Catholic Church
was shattered. Thanks to the twin blows of the Protestant
Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Rome, celebrated both as the
Eternal City and Caput Mundi (the head of the world) had lost its
pre-eminent place in Europe. Then a new Pope, Alexander VII, fired
with religious zeal, political guile and a mania for building,
determined to restore the prestige of his church by making Rome the
must-visit destination for Europe's intellectual, political and
cultural elite. To help him do so, he enlisted the talents of
Gianlorenzo Bernini, already celebrated as the most important
living artist: no mean feat in the age of Rubens, Rembrandt and
Velazquez. Together, Alexander VII and Bernini made the greatest
artistic double act in history, inventing the concept of soft power
and the bucket list destination. Bernini and Alexander's creation
of Baroque Rome as a city more beautiful and grander than since the
days of the Emperor Augustus continues to delight and attract.
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