Week 6: Portraiture in the Roman Republic

Jeremy Tanner, "Portraits, Power, and Patronage in the Late Roman Republic". The Journal of Roman Studies. Vol. 90 (2000), 18-50

* 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. This explanation fails to establish a clear conception of the social function of art.

* 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.

* The Roman veristic style consists of a "cartographic realism" that carefully describes the distinguishing features of the sitter, laying particular emphasis on physiognomical peculiarities.

* 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 Republic was conflictual and contradictory; the Romans valued age as a sign of political authority.

* 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.

Detail of portrait of a Roman general, Tivoli, c. 70 B.C.

Portrait of a Roman general, Tivoli, c. 70 B.C.

* 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.

* 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.

* The sensuous material of a sign means nothing until it evokes a certain meaning-laden response in an individual.

* 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.

* 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.

Sheldon Nodelman, "How to Read a Roman Portrait". Roman Art in Context: An Anthology. ed. Eve D'Ambra (Englewood Cliffs, 1993), 10-26

* Roman artists invented a new kind of portraiture, as unlike that of Greeks as it was unlike their own local tradition; this new art was capable of articulating the interior processes of human experience and made possible in the following centuries the most extraordinary body of portrait art ever created;

* Roman portraiture and art can both be described as a system of signs; Romans often reached into the realm of contemporaneous political and social ideas for themes that entered the context of particular portrait modes;

* This class of portraits consists exclusively of men in later life, often balding and with grim expressions, and whose faces are wrinkled, blemished, and creased; the portrayals are unequivocally grim, haggard and ungenerous; they can be described as attempts to plasticize a seen reality without idealization or programmatic bias;

* One could suppose that these faces closely reflect the prevailing temperament of the society and class to which they belong, and the pained expressions testify the terrible emotional strains of a society torn apart by war;

* The pattern of recurrence of these physical traits makes these portraits look very much alike; it soon becomes apparent that these portraits are part of a conventional type that intended to convey a forceful and polemical content;

* The emphasis on the marks of age calls attention to the subject's long service to the state and their faithfulness to constitutional procedures (contrasting the quick rise to power of men like Caesar, Pompey, Antony, etc.);

* The seeming indifference or frankness with which the subjects acknowledge or proclaim their ugly-ness is surely a defiant response to the propagandistic glamorization of physiognomy and character in the portraits of quarreling war-lords that stood in opposition to inherited Roman values;

* In the veristic portraiture of the first century B.C. the new image-structure will determine the operations of the Roman portrait as a system of communication whose content is defined positively by the evocation of desired associations and negatively by implied contrast with other images bearing an opposing content;

* The Augustus of Prima Porta evidences a system of construction of independently meaningful parts, with a) a body type inherited from the Doryphoros with a noble equilibration of the pose, juxtaposed with b) a raised arm, independently conceived and carrying a well-established meaning in Roman society; c) the military costume describes Augustus as an imperator or commander and invokes his martial success to justify his authority; the omission of the boots helps formalize the military meaning into a separate unit while recalling both the normative Roman heroic nudes and d) the subject's existence on a higher-than-mundane plane; his cuirass illustrates his military achievements in Parthia against a cosmic panorama (representing a restoration of the natural order and the elevation of Rome to a kind of universal sovereignty) and the little Cupid by his feet that reminds the viewer of Augustus's divine descent from Venus;

* This image exists not for itself but for the spectator of whom an intellectual cooperation is certainly demanded;

Marble portrait of Augustus, from Livia’s villa at Primaporta, after A.D. 14

Doryphoros, marble statue by Polikleitos, from Pompeii, ca. 450-40 B.C.

* The god-like youthfulness of his face stands in deliberate contrast to the exhausted, old faces that the veristic style represented (it's important to note Augustus's apparent inability to age, as portrayed in his many busts and statue types); this contrast seems to be intentional - old faces convey hopelessness, while Augustus offers the boundless possibilities of youth; Augustus's portraits borrow more than "youth is godliness" from the Hellenistic period - through his gaze, from which the force of his personality pours out, he becomes superhuman, heroized; this is all done with great restraint, especially for public portraits, to avoid the common Roman reaction of distrust and resentment against overly exultant portrayals of rulers; the gaze recalls the intensity and self-control of the Capitoline Brutus, shown below;
So-called Capitoline Brutus, fourth to second century B.C.

* The neoclassical style of the head (broad planes, severely contrasted verticals and horizontals) ties everything together to create a portrait with density of meaning and cogency.

Week 5: Hellenistic Portraits II: The World of the Polis

Sheila Dillon, "Portraits of Women in the Early Hellenistic Period" in Early Hellenistic Portraiture: Image, Style, Context (Cambridge 2006), 63-82

* Portrait statues of women were a major component of Hellenistic sculptural production, yet they are oddly underrepresented in our histories of Greek portraiture;

* Most female portraits are idealized constructs; many are unable to be categorized as portraits of mortal women (as opposed to goddesses); their lack of differentiation falls short of modern expectations of portrait likeness;

* With male heads, men and gods were clearly differentiated, the statues communicating clearly the role of the subject in society (through the pose of the body and items of clothing) and the head providing an individual identity;

* For female portraits, the focus for differentiation is on the body and the inscription at the base of the statue, while the heads are normative and difficult to differentiate;

* The portrait of Aristonoe (shown below) has a face that is no different from that of other female priestesses; it has also been excluded from the contemporary study of Greek portraiture, even though, Dillon argues, it carries a similar complexity of character and expressiveness as the statue of Demosthenes, which has been sufficiently studied;

* The modern imposition of "likeness" in portraiture has effectively erased female portraiture from the history of Greek art;

* Dillon's essay has two aims: a) to consider the body types used for female portraits and b) to explore the homogeneity of the portrait heads;

* How was female identity constructed? Why wasn't likeness a concern for portraits of women? How did the sculptor's presumed limited access to women at the time affect portraiture? How was the display of these female bodies "policed"?

* The Tanagra figurines imitate monumental statuary styles, specifically in the drapery of the clothes, and provide visual evidence of the appearance of female portraits in the third century BC;

* The statue bases indicate that women begin to be honored regularly in portraits around mid-4th century BC; most portraits are set up in sanctuary contexts, either honoring women individually as priestesses or collectively as members of a family; most were paid for with private funds but intended for public display;

* Most female portraits are life-size or slightly larger and stood on bases, making them quite sizeable;

* "[...] a perpetual public presence";

* Placing these statues near the statues of deities raised the social standing of the subject of the portrait;

* Some female portraits were made in bronze and some in marble, though the ratio is unknown; marble was possibly preferred for female statues because it lent itself to painting and decorating more than bronze;

* Some statues were made from a single piece of marble, but others were "pieced" together in ingenious ways;

* Greek portraits, male or female, were always full bodied; it is under Roman influence that the split is conceived; head and body combined produced a coherent whole;

* While the heads of female portraits look the same, much variety can be found in the bodies (clothing and pose); this may be due to Roman influence;

* Most portraits show at least two garments: a short-sleeved tunic that hangs down to the plinth and covers the feet and a large rectangular mantle; the latter provides the differentiation of drapery with patterns, as it is this piece that is most visible; the visual effects were achieved by careful depiction of fabric weight;

* There are two types of statue positions and drapery styles, which correspond to the age of the subject: a) a tightly-wrapped mantle with one "arm in a sling" and uncovered hair (for a young, probably unmarried woman) and b) a loosely-wrapped mantle with one arm on the hip, in a provocative pose, and with veiled hair (for an older, married woman);

* The garments shown in these portraits were most likely worn by women in real life; the terra-cotta figurines serve to show the fashions of the time;

* The faces of these portraits are nearly the same; smooth skin, long nose, small lips, hair parted in the middle, with subtle details around the nose or chin to "humanize" the portrait; wearing a veil seems to have been the norm;

* The heads of women in this period construct a woman of an idealized beauty; the main character qualities that are given visual form in these portraits are modesty, impeccable reputation and feminine beauty; the female subject's actual appearance was of little importance in the early Hellenistic period - sameness, rather than individuality - is their defining feature' the public identity of women was relational and familial rather than individual;

* It has been argued that women enjoyed a much improved position in society during the Hellenistic period, however there are opposing views that claim a continuity of attitude towards women from the Classical period; the rise of female presence in the form of honorary dedications (funding) is due more to a general increase in wealth in the Greek world which led to the dedication of honorary portraits that include women and that eventually elevate the prestige of the family as a whole;

* Another possible reason for this homogeneity is the social impossibility of having a female subject sit for a portrait statue; most sculptors had to make do with male models who were often relatives of the subject;

* The naked Aphrodites were made for erotic and sexual pleasure (some contest that Praxiteles' Aphrodite (shown below) was based on the body of the courtesan Phryne, though this has not been definitively proven) while the female portraits were made to represent and elevate the social prominence of women; despite this difference, one can still find erotic tension in the draped portraits, between the modesty of the face and the suggestiveness of the drapery;

C L A S S N O T E S


Detail of Alexander, Alexander Mosaic, Roman copy of lost Greek original of c. 330 B.C.


Athena fighting giant, Altar of Zeus, Pergamon, c. 160-30 B.C.

* New wealth in the hands of rulers and less in the hands of the masses led to a much larger creation of portraits of rulers.


Aphrodite from Melos, c. 150 B.C.

Grave relief of a priestess of Demeter from Smyrna, 200-100 B.C.

Aphrodite from temple at Knidos, Roman copy of c. 350 B.C. original by Praxiteles.

Hellenistic version of Athena Parthenos from library of Pergamon, second century B.C.

Grave stele of Ampharete, Kerameikos, Athens, c. 430-20 B.C.

Head of Aphrodite from Melos, c. 150 B.C.

Head of Ptolemaic queen, likely Arsinoe II, c. 270-50 B.C., marble

* The heads and faces of women portrayed in this period were very similar across the board. The hairstyles and facial expressions were also very similar and allowed for very little deviation from the type, which was based on the idea that the most distinctive and individuating physical characteristic of women was beauty. This beauty was normative and typified to create a fairly cohesive picture of what a beautiful woman looks like.

Head of copy of Aphrodite of Knidos, original c. 350 B.C.

Head of woman from Kos, c. 300-200 B.C.

* This highly consistent portrayal of women stands in contrast to the portrayal of men in this period, with the possible exception of the Cleopatra III bust, shown below.

Bust of Cleopatra III, c. 140-100 B.C.

* The downward gaze in most of these portraits can be interpreted as a gesture of modesty.

Veiled and draped woman from Kos, c. 300-200 B.C.
Fragmentary bronze of a woman, Izmir, c. 300-200 B.C.

* Minor alterations in the drapery carried a great deal of meaning for the Greeks, as this was one very effective way for women to seek individual identities. The way in which the fabrics were used, the kind, weight, color etc. often reflected the wearer's taste, social class, modesty and fashion sense (if one can speak of such a thing in this period).

* The body, for the classical period, is a more relevant bearer or meaning to the point where the faces can be said to be quite similar to each other when compared to the Hellenistic period. The body, as well as the composition, was the focus of the portrait.

* The portrait of Kleopatra, from her house in Delos, shows a very taut draping and a desire to show their social status through the elaborate costume on both portraits.

Portraits of Kleopatra and Dioskourides from their house on Delos, c. 140 B.C.

* The Tanagra figurines provide a detailed idea of how women presented themselves in public. These share some similarities with the full scale statues of women, but differ in the degree of variation of accessories and draping styles depicted. These figurines were likely used in the home, and were meant to portray "average" women in public.

‘Tanagra figurine’ terracotta, c. 325-300 B.C.

‘Tanagra figurine’ terracotta, c. 325-300 B.C.

* Priestesses in stelai were perhaps the most expressive portraits of that period.

Portrait of priestess Aristonoe, Rhamnous, c. 280 B.C.

Grave stele of a woman, Smyrna, c. 200-100 B.C.

Grave stele of Hegeso, Kerameikos, Athens, c. 410 B.C.

* Classical portraits are extremely limited in range; they do not include women because most portraits served a military, political or intellectual purpose, roles from which women were excluded. In the Hellenistic period, the proliferation of queens and their often expansive public roles led to the increase in depiction of women in portraits. Another reason could be the change of conceptualization of male-female relationships and the shift towards more exclusively heterosexual relationships among the Greeks.

Portrait of a woman, Kos, c. 300-200 B.C.

Coin of Arsinoe II, c. 270 B.C.

The Tyrannicides (Harmodios and Aristogeiton), Roman marble copies of Greek bronze statues by Kritios and Nesiotes, c. 477 B.C.

Aphrodite and Pan, from the establishment of the worshippers of Poseidon from Beiruit, Delos, c. 100 B.C.

Week 4: Met Visit (pt 2)