Using Images in Late Antiquity

Fifteen papers focus on the active and dynamic uses of images during the first millennium AD. They bring together an international group of scholars who situate the period’s visual practices within their political, religious, and social contexts. The contributors present a diverse range of evidence, including mosaics, sculpture, and architecture from all parts of the Mediterranean, from Spain in the west to Jordan in the east. Contributions span from the depiction of individuals on funerary monuments through monumental epigraphy, Constantine’s expropriation and symbolic re-use of earlier monuments, late antique collections of Classical statuary, and city personifications in mosaics to the topic of civic prosperity during the Theodosian period and dynastic representation during the Umayyad dynasty. Together they provide new insights into the central role of visual culture in the constitution of late antique societies.

The editors are all affiliated with the Department of Classical Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, and were responsible for the collaborative research project“Art and Social Identities in Late Antiquity” (2007-2010).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction (Stine Birk, Troels Myrup Kristensen and Birte Poulsen)
2. Chi parla a chi? Epigrafia monumentale e immagine pubblica in epoca tardoantica (Paolo Liverani)
3. Using Images for Self-Representation on Roman Sarcophagi (Stine Birk)
4. Maxentius, Constantine, and Hadrian: Images and the Expropriation of Imperial Identity (Eric Varner)
5. Late Antique Honorific Sculpture in Constantinople (Sarah Bassett)
6. Collections, Canon, and Context: The Afterlife of Greek Masterpieces in Late Antiquity (Lea Stirling)
7. Late Antique Sculpture in Augusta Emerita and its Territory (Hispania): Officinae, patterns, and circuits (Trinidad Nogales Basarrate)
8. Temples and Civic Representation in the Theodosian Period (Ine Jacobs)
9. Triumphal Arches and Gates of Piety at Constantinople, Ravenna and Rome (Simon Malmberg)
10. Urban Armatures, Urban Vignettes: The Interpermeation of the Reality and Ideal of the Late Antique Metropolis (Hendrik Dey)
11. City Personifications in Late Antiquity (Birte Poulsen)
12. Mythology and Theatre in the Mosaics of the Graeco-Roman East (Katherine Dunbabin)
13. Alla ricerca di un’identità. Tradizioni classiche nella prima iconografia Cristiana (Arnaldo Marcone)
14. Using and Abusing Images in Late Antiquity (and Beyond): Column Monuments as Topoi of Idolatry (Troels Myrup Kristensen)
15. The Encyclopaedic Illustration of a New Empire: Graeco-Roman-Byzantine and Sasanian Models on the Façade of Qasr al-Mshatta (Katharina Meinecke)
List of contributors
Index

Birte Poulsen is Associate Professor at the Department of History and Classical Studies (Classical Archaeology), Aarhus University. Her main research interests are art and archaeology of the imperial period and Late Antiquity with special reference to architecture and mosaics.