Reconstructing Ancient Sculpture: The Literary, Epigraphic, Numismatic and Archaeological Evidence
The new millennium has seen a burgeoning of colloquia and books on how to approach and understand Greek and Roman sculpture, much of which is only available to us in a very incomplete and fragmentary state of preservation. Until Johann J. Winckelmann’s, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Dresden, 1764) those works of art were reconstructed and visualized mainly through the names of the great masters in the writings of Pliny the Elder, Pausanias or Vitruvius. Alois Riegel and Franz Wickhoff in the 19th and 20th centuries turned that method into Kopienkritik and Altertumswissenschaft that interpreted Roman art as a poor copy or reproduction of Greek art. Recent scholarship has opened a liberating rethinking of “classical sculpture” and copying in Roman ideal art, getting away from the absolute Greek ideal of beauty. The emphasis today is on emulation, recreation and adaptation for context (E. Gazda, ed. The Ancient Art of Emulation, Ann Arbor 2002; M. Martin, The Language of the Muses. The Dialogue between Greek and Roman Sculpture, Los Angeles, 2008; K. Junker and A. Stähli, eds., Original und Kopie: Formen und Konzepte der Nachahmungen in der antiken Kunst, Wiesbaden 2008; R. M. Kousser, Hellenistic and Roman Ideal Sculpture, Cambridge 2008) and a return to a more Winckelmannian analysis.
The Friends of Numismatics invite proposals for papers (15-20 minutes each) on this subject using texts, inscriptions, coins and sculpture in stone and bronze, focusing on less known works and the so-called minor arts. In order to participate, please submit an abstract of 300 words to Monique Goodin Monique_Goodin@harvard.edu by March 12th, 2017. Please see the summary of eligibility requirements and related policies for submitting an abstract to the SCS at: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/guidelines-authors-abstracts .The abstracts are reviewed anonymously so attach a PDF or WORD document without your name and affiliation to your e-mail message.