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Sheldon Nodelman, "How to Read a Roman Portrait". * Verism invokes meanings at several levels: a) at a cultural level, the style does not reflect Roman values in general, but values that are relevant to the relationship of patronage (values which the portrait both objectifies and sustains) b) at a social level, verism functions as a visual metaphor that invokes the shared normative culture and c) verism is the material basis that makes possible the generalization of meanings and sentiments proper to the relationship.
Roman republican portraiture series#
* Following is a series of assumptions made on the basis of Cicero's writings on honorific portraiture: a) the spatial setting of honorific portraits was controlled by the Senate and the People b) an honorific portrait is a gift, which had the effect of setting up an obligation on the part of the honorand towards the state c) the portrait articulates an internal relationship between the Senate, the People and the honorand via the size, placement, posture, and other factors that were decided by the Senate d) the act of giving an honorific statue presupposes the existence of a system of institutionalized norms that is shared between the honorand and the state. * The sensuous material of a sign means nothing until it evokes a certain meaning-laden response in an individual.
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* Iconographic studies of these portraits have given us a clearer idea of the particular choices being made in selecting body models for particular statues and has allowed for a more detailed decoding of their meaning within the Hellenistic Greek (and hellenizing Roman) art. * Nudity in these veristic portraits was a striking choice in both Roman and Greek portraiture of the second and first centuries BC the default type was more fully draped and corresponded to civic benefactors. * The existing approaches of studying Roman portraits (art as propaganda or a reflection of society, by Zanker or art as ideology, by Smith or art as rhetoric, by Giuliani) can't explain the timing of the development of verism the values that give rise to the style were part of Roman society for centuries (since the fourth century B.C., at least) prior to the establishment of verism as a style also, there is a substantial group of portraits that combine veristic heads with ideal, Hellenistic nude bodies, like the Tivoli general shown below.ĭetail of portrait of a Roman general, Tivoli, c. * The Republic was conflictual and contradictory the Romans valued age as a sign of political authority. * Hellenistic kings are almost always represented as youthful, while civic benefactors are portrayed similar to the philosopher model and following closely the classical ideal. * The Roman veristic style consists of a "cartographic realism" that carefully describes the distinguishing features of the sitter, laying particular emphasis on physiognomical peculiarities. * Art is not merely a social product or a symbol of power relations, but also serves to construct relationships of power and solidarity in ways that other cultural forms can't. This explanation fails to establish a clear conception of the social function of art. * Recent scholarship in portraiture has been concerned with the interpretation of portraits as a system of signs functioning within a specific context which explains the visual patterns. Jeremy Tanner, "Portraits, Power, and Patronage in the Late Roman Republic".