Portraits of a group of thirty kosmētai, public philosophy teachers in Athens, were found among the fill in the Valerian Wall by the Roman Agora in Athens in 1861. From the Hellenistic period onwards, the kosmētai had taught the philosophy or Aristotle, though, with time, the teaching became more varied. In the first century AD, the number of students had a peak of three hundred a year. In the third century, when the portraits were buried in the Valerian Wall, the number of students had decreased, much as it had in other pedagogic institutions. The activity of the kosmētai ended about AD 280 when the Valerian Wall was built. The dating of the Valerian Wall is based on coins with the portrait of emperor Probus (AD 276-282), which have been found among the building debris. What we know about the kosmētai from the written sources leads to several questions, such as why the kosmētai portraits were used as building material at a time when the identity of the sitters could sill be remembered. Why were some of the portraits recut into those of other individuals shortly before they were put into the wall? Some of the kosmētai portraits were produced recut and discarded during the span of a few decades. This paper discusses the portraits of the kosmētai and their significance in Roman Athens and explores questions related to the disposal of them, as well as to context, style, workshop, and patronage.
{"title":"The Kosmētai Portraits in Third Century Athens. Recutting, Style, Context and Patronage","authors":"M. Prusac","doi":"10.5617/ACTA.6869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5617/ACTA.6869","url":null,"abstract":"Portraits of a group of thirty kosmētai, public philosophy teachers in Athens, were found among the fill in the Valerian Wall by the Roman Agora in Athens in 1861. From the Hellenistic period onwards, the kosmētai had taught the philosophy or Aristotle, though, with time, the teaching became more varied. In the first century AD, the number of students had a peak of three hundred a year. In the third century, when the portraits were buried in the Valerian Wall, the number of students had decreased, much as it had in other pedagogic institutions. The activity of the kosmētai ended about AD 280 when the Valerian Wall was built. The dating of the Valerian Wall is based on coins with the portrait of emperor Probus (AD 276-282), which have been found among the building debris. What we know about the kosmētai from the written sources leads to several questions, such as why the kosmētai portraits were used as building material at a time when the identity of the sitters could sill be remembered. Why were some of the portraits recut into those of other individuals shortly before they were put into the wall? Some of the kosmētai portraits were produced recut and discarded during the span of a few decades. This paper discusses the portraits of the kosmētai and their significance in Roman Athens and explores questions related to the disposal of them, as well as to context, style, workshop, and patronage.","PeriodicalId":426742,"journal":{"name":"Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134098138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Archaeological evidence demonstrates that funerary spoil (e.g. sarcophagus lids, funerary altars, epitaphs, reliefs, and statues) were frequently reused to decorate the interiors of public and private buildings from the third to the sixth century. Therefore, the marble revetments of high imperial tombs must have been spoliated. Imperial edicts, which tried to stamp part the overly common practice of tomb plundering, confirm that the social practice of tomb plundering must have been far more frequent in late antiquity than in previous periods. This paper discusses the reuse of funerary spoil in privet and public buildings from Latium and Campania and contextualizes them by examining legal sources addressing tomb violation. Furthermore, this study considers the extent to which the social practice of tomb plundering and the reuse of funerary material in late antiquity can be connected with larger urbanist, sociohistorical, and political transformations of Italian cityscapes from the third to the sixth century.
{"title":"From the Tombs into the City: Grave Robbing and the Reuse of Funerary Spolia in Late Antique Italy","authors":"Cristina Murer","doi":"10.5617/ACTA.6868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5617/ACTA.6868","url":null,"abstract":"Archaeological evidence demonstrates that funerary spoil (e.g. sarcophagus lids, funerary altars, epitaphs, reliefs, and statues) were frequently reused to decorate the interiors of public and private buildings from the third to the sixth century. Therefore, the marble revetments of high imperial tombs must have been spoliated. Imperial edicts, which tried to stamp part the overly common practice of tomb plundering, confirm that the social practice of tomb plundering must have been far more frequent in late antiquity than in previous periods. This paper discusses the reuse of funerary spoil in privet and public buildings from Latium and Campania and contextualizes them by examining legal sources addressing tomb violation. Furthermore, this study considers the extent to which the social practice of tomb plundering and the reuse of funerary material in late antiquity can be connected with larger urbanist, sociohistorical, and political transformations of Italian cityscapes from the third to the sixth century.","PeriodicalId":426742,"journal":{"name":"Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121961375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Of the observations made during the author’s research in S. Maria Antiqua (1957-1960), the most baffling were some which indicated that efforts had been made in the early eighth century A.D. to preserve and safeguard the older fresco-images in the church. The procedure discovered here, which had served to incorporate important earlier iconographical matter into the program designed for Pope John VII (A.D. 705-707), was a phenomenon then wholly unknown from church art of the period. However, that a systematic labor of image-reuse according to such principles had been carried out, could be established with certainty on the basis of some very precise archaeological facts. These facts had to do, above all, with the absence on many of the earlier fresco panels in the church of the hatchings or indentures thickly applied to frescoed walls wherever they were to receive new coats of mortar. As proved by meticulous study of the panels in S. Maria Antiqua on which no chisel marks are found, none had had newer strata of painting applied to them. Evidence of these picture-protecting exerts is abundant in the church and prompted conclusions like the following (1968): ”Now it becomes possible also to gauge the fervor with which the individual frescoes were worshipped. The reluctance to obliterate a picture, the efforts made to preserve it, and also the eventual repainting of it with strict adherence to the original subject, all reflect an attitude characteristic of the cult of the icon”. Nordhagen 1968, 90.
{"title":"The Art of Recycling Fresco-Icons. At the Roots of the Cult of Images.","authors":"P. Nordhagen","doi":"10.5617/ACTA.6873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5617/ACTA.6873","url":null,"abstract":"Of the observations made during the author’s research in S. Maria Antiqua (1957-1960), the most baffling were some which indicated that efforts had been made in the early eighth century A.D. to preserve and safeguard the older fresco-images in the church. The procedure discovered here, which had served to incorporate important earlier iconographical matter into the program designed for Pope John VII (A.D. 705-707), was a phenomenon then wholly unknown from church art of the period. However, that a systematic labor of image-reuse according to such principles had been carried out, could be established with certainty on the basis of some very precise archaeological facts. These facts had to do, above all, with the absence on many of the earlier fresco panels in the church of the hatchings or indentures thickly applied to frescoed walls wherever they were to receive new coats of mortar. As proved by meticulous study of the panels in S. Maria Antiqua on which no chisel marks are found, none had had newer strata of painting applied to them. Evidence of these picture-protecting exerts is abundant in the church and prompted conclusions like the following (1968): ”Now it becomes possible also to gauge the fervor with which the individual frescoes were worshipped. The reluctance to obliterate a picture, the efforts made to preserve it, and also the eventual repainting of it with strict adherence to the original subject, all reflect an attitude characteristic of the cult of the icon”. Nordhagen 1968, 90.","PeriodicalId":426742,"journal":{"name":"Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131215583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Si parte dalla scultura di Costantinopoli, che assume una propria identità non con Teodosio I come si pensa comunemente, ma con il nipote Teodosio II: la scultura di carattere mitologico, grazie alla statuetta di Cristo del Museo Nazionale Romano e alla statua di Valentiniano II, da Afrodisia, può essere attribuita, unitamente alla produzione “cristiana”, a maestranze afrodisiensi attive nella capitale. Maestranze di Afrodisia che contemporaneamente hanno lavorato a Roma: non solo per soggetti pagani, ma pure per a statuetta diCristo e per sarcofagi cristiani (come quello di Giunio Basso), tra cui spicca - come l’esemplare di più alta qualità - il sarcofago del beato Egidio in S. Bernardino a Perugia. Maestranze afrodisiensi sicuramente attive anche a Mantova per il sarcofago della cattedrale: dove tuttavia, come per i varii esemplari di Roma , vi è la compresenza di maestranze romane, italicheforse. Pure in Renania notiamo l’attività degli artefici di Afrodisia; mentre a Ravenna siamo davanti a sarcofagi importati direttamente da Costantinopoli, nella cui esecuzione si vede evidente la mano di maestranze afrodisiensi di vario livello. Per Efeso, ho rinvenuto nella città alta un capitello di pilastro di età antonina, ch’è stato in parte rilavorato in modo mimetico forse all’inizio del V secolo: è l’unico elemento nuovo tra le opere di artefici effemini finora apparso per questo periodo nella città , accanto ai capitelli della prima basilica di S. Giovanni, della”Stigengasse” e dell’edificio a ovest del Prytaneion.
{"title":"La scultura della seconda metà del IV secolo d.C.","authors":"Eugenio Russo","doi":"10.5617/ACTA.6874","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5617/ACTA.6874","url":null,"abstract":"Si parte dalla scultura di Costantinopoli, che assume una propria identità non con Teodosio I come si pensa comunemente, ma con il nipote Teodosio II: la scultura di carattere mitologico, grazie alla statuetta di Cristo del Museo Nazionale Romano e alla statua di Valentiniano II, da Afrodisia, può essere attribuita, unitamente alla produzione “cristiana”, a maestranze afrodisiensi attive nella capitale. Maestranze di Afrodisia che contemporaneamente hanno lavorato a Roma: non solo per soggetti pagani, ma pure per a statuetta diCristo e per sarcofagi cristiani (come quello di Giunio Basso), tra cui spicca - come l’esemplare di più alta qualità - il sarcofago del beato Egidio in S. Bernardino a Perugia. Maestranze afrodisiensi sicuramente attive anche a Mantova per il sarcofago della cattedrale: dove tuttavia, come per i varii esemplari di Roma , vi è la compresenza di maestranze romane, italicheforse. Pure in Renania notiamo l’attività degli artefici di Afrodisia; mentre a Ravenna siamo davanti a sarcofagi importati direttamente da Costantinopoli, nella cui esecuzione si vede evidente la mano di maestranze afrodisiensi di vario livello. Per Efeso, ho rinvenuto nella città alta un capitello di pilastro di età antonina, ch’è stato in parte rilavorato in modo mimetico forse all’inizio del V secolo: è l’unico elemento nuovo tra le opere di artefici effemini finora apparso per questo periodo nella città , accanto ai capitelli della prima basilica di S. Giovanni, della”Stigengasse” e dell’edificio a ovest del Prytaneion.","PeriodicalId":426742,"journal":{"name":"Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126918361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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