Caroline Vout

Antinous, Archaeology and History

Antinous was the young, male lover of Hadrian. His premature death in A.D. 130 led to an oddly extravagant commemoration. Post-Renaissance he became one of the most collectable portrait types. This article re-examines the corpus of portraits as it is currently configured. Its primary aim is not to exclude or add pieces but to question the criteria on which inclusion and exclusion are based. This questioning cuts to the heart of issues of identification, dating, and authenticity which impact on art-historical classification more generally. It exposes how in some ways the modern Antinous is one of the disciplines making.

Unfinished business: Re-viewing Medea in Roman painting

This chapter examines the Medea of Roman painting. In some senses, this constitutes a crazy editorial decision: gems and sculpture, sarcophagi in particular, are a crucial part of the visual culture that pulls and pushes against text and theatre. But in other senses, a two-dimensional focus offers peculiar challenges that situate Medea firmly within the domestic sphere, in cubicula and peristyles; and yet also beyond this sphere. Unlike freestanding sculpture, which actively intervenes in the viewers space, painting affords access to a parallel universe. Its figures are not cold to the touch like Pygmalions statue. They are intangible, exciting different desires from those elicited by stone, desires which invite viewers to leave their world behind them; or at least to pause and take stock. In these ways, painting provides a commentary on everyday life - closer to performances on stage than to installation.

Tiberius and the Invention of Succession

Augustus writes the script for the part of princeps. Whereas the dictator Caesar is assassinated, the princeps Augustus dies in his bed, in the same room no less as his natural father, Octavius.1 His heirs, Tiberius and Livia, and Tiberius’ heirs, are on stage already. The script is even published, the high-points of his res gestae pre-selected to serve as précis and template of the successful ruler. Repetition and continuity have been established as key to Augustus’ success: he has rebuilt over eighty temples in his sixth consulship in the city of Rome alone, re-established the older arrangements for elections, attempted, at least, to revive the ancient manner of dress, and restored the works of the great men of Rome’s past, dedicating statues to them in his forum, so that, ‘he, while he lived, and the rulers of later ages would be required by the Roman people to take the lives of these men as their exemplar’—res publica reddita.2 Innovation has been packaged as

From the ancient world to world art

Abstract This short position paper interrogates the weight of the word ‘art’ in the title ‘World Art’ and asks us to think harder about the differences between Art History and Comparative History. Written by a Classicist, it takes Greek and Roman art as its springboard.