Twelve Caesars (Signed 1st Edition)

Mary Beard

ISBN 10: 0691222363 / ISBN 13: 9780691222363

Published by Princeton University Press, 2021

About this Item

Purple boards with gilt titles. Dust jacket is not price clipped. Clean pages. Firm unread binding. Signed by the author to the title page. 1st impression with the full publishers numberline. Professional seller. All pictures are of the actual book that is for sale. Books are dispatched in cardboard packaging and dust jackets are placed in removable protective covers.

Seller Inventory # 18875

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Twelve Caesars (Signed 1st Edition)
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691222363
• ISBN 13: 9780691222363
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Signed: Signed By Author

About this title

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years

What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book―against a background of today’s “sculpture wars”―Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “Twelve Caesars,” from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian. Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Neros fiddling while Rome burns.

Beginning with the importance of imperial portraits in Roman politics, this richly illustrated book offers a tour through 2,000 years of art and cultural history, presenting a fresh look at works by artists from Memling and Mantegna to the nineteenth-century American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, as well as by generations of weavers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths, printers, and ceramicists. Rather than a story of a simple repetition of stable, blandly conservative images of imperial men and women, Twelve Caesars is an unexpected tale of changing identities, clueless or deliberate misidentifications, fakes, and often ambivalent representations of authority.

From Beard’s reconstruction of Titian’s extraordinary lost Room of the Emperors to her reinterpretation of Henry VIII’s famous Caesarian tapestries, Twelve Caesars includes fascinating detective work and offers a gripping story of some of the most challenging and disturbing portraits of power ever created.

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

About the Author

Mary Beard is one of the world’s leading classicists and cultural commentators, and the author of bestselling and award-winning books, including SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome and Women and Power: A Manifesto. A specialist in Roman history and art, she has also written and presented many television programs, from Civilisations and Meet the Romans to The Shock of the Nude.