Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. xiv-3
Author(s):  
Lea K. Cline ◽  
Nathan T. Elkins

Roman imagery and iconography are typically studied under the more general umbrella of Roman art in medium-specific studies. This handbook focuses primarily on visual imagery in the Roman world, examined by context and period, and the evolving scholarly traditions of iconographic analysis and visual semiotics that have framed the modern study of these images. As such topics—or, more directly, the isolation of these topics from medium-specific or strictly temporal evaluations of Roman art—are uncommon in monograph-length studies, our goal is that this handbook will be an important reference for both the communicative value of images in the Roman world and the tradition of iconographical analysis. The chapters herein represent contributions from a number of leading and emerging authorities on Roman imagery and iconography from across the world, representing a variety of academic traditions and methods of image analysis.

Roman imagery and iconography are typically studied under the more general umbrella of Roman art and in broader, medium-specific studies. This handbook focuses primarily on visual imagery in the Roman world, examined by context and period, and the evolving scholarly traditions of iconographic analysis and visual semiotics that have framed the modern study of these images. As such topics—or, more directly, the isolation of these topics from medium-specific or strictly temporal evaluations of Roman art—are uncommon in monograph-length studies, our goal is that this handbook will be an important reference for both the communicative value of images in the Roman world and the tradition of iconographical analysis. The chapters herein represent contributions from a number of leading and emerging authorities on Roman imagery and iconography from across the world, representing a variety of academic traditions and methods of image analysis.


Author(s):  
Simon James

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city's interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.


Neophilologus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Jones

AbstractThis article examines the iconographic programme of the Last Judgement scene depicted in Christ III. A notable feature of the poem’s detailed visual programme is the way in which it provides the audience with a single, panoramic vision that encompasses the divergent perspectives of the blessed and the damned. It is on account of this dual perspective that the poem, through its precise use of language and imagery, presents the audience with a bifocal vision of Christ as King of Kings and Judge of the World, in keeping with the words of Revelation 19:16. A detailed analysis of the poem’s imagery, however, suggests that its portrait of Christ as Judge is not only informed by scripture and exegetical sources, but is also indebted to contemporary visual imagery, particularly the depiction of Christ as Majestas Domini, or Christ in Majesty. As a result, and by approaching the poem’s imagery from an iconological perspective, it is argued that the poet of Christ III had a detailed knowledge of contemporary Christological motifs. Furthermore, a careful analysis of the language used to describe the Judgement scene, and particularly the depiction of Christ as Judge, suggests that the poet intentionally seeks to evoke a range of specific visual images in the mind of his audience in order to amplify the poem’s instructive and penitential aims.


2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 640-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Slovic ◽  
Daniel Västfjäll ◽  
Arvid Erlandsson ◽  
Robin Gregory

The power of visual imagery is well known, enshrined in such familiar sayings as “seeing is believing” and “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Iconic photos stir our emotions and transform our perspectives about life and the world in which we live. On September 2, 2015, photographs of a young Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi, lying face-down on a Turkish beach, filled the front pages of newspapers worldwide. These images brought much-needed attention to the Syrian war that had resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and created millions of refugees. Here we present behavioral data demonstrating that, in this case, an iconic photo of a single child had more impact than statistical reports of hundreds of thousands of deaths. People who had been unmoved by the relentlessly rising death toll in Syria suddenly appeared to care much more after having seen Aylan’s photograph; however, this newly created empathy waned rather quickly. We briefly examine the psychological processes underlying these findings, discuss some of their policy implications, and reflect on the lessons they provide about the challenges to effective intervention in the face of mass threats to human well-being.


Author(s):  
Dmitri A. Gusev

We present the results of our image analysis of portrait art from the Roman Empire’s Julio-Claudian dynastic period. Our novel approach involves processing pictures of ancient statues, cameos, altar friezes, bas-reliefs, frescoes, and coins using modern mobile apps, such as Reface and FaceApp, to improve identification of the historical subjects depicted. In particular, we have discovered that the Reface app has limited, but useful capability to restore the approximate appearance of damaged noses of the statues. We confirm many traditional identifications, propose a few identification corrections for items located in museums and private collections around the world, and discuss the advantages and limitations of our approach. For example, Reface may make aquiline noses appear wider or shorter than they should be. This deficiency can be partially corrected if multiple views are available. We demonstrate that our approach can be extended to analyze portraiture from other cultures and historical periods. The article is intended for a broad section of the readers interested in how the modern AI-based solutions for mobile imaging merge with humanities to help improve our understanding of the modern civilization’s ancient past and increase appreciation of our diverse cultural heritage.


Author(s):  
Oleksandr Brayko

The paper considers the means of representing space in Yevhen Hutsalo’s prose which are suitable for comparison with the painting technique. Coloring is one of determining graphic resources of a picture. The artistic effect of the figures and spatial compositions fixed on canvas is to a great extent predefined by the color solution of the subjects and air environment depicted. In order to make the world of imagination more representational the literature used to involve visual imagery in a verbal design, in which color and light markers not only specify a representation of fictitious or real situation but also give some lyrical, epical or dramatic coloring to the narration, increasing the expressivity of a picture. In the descriptions of landscapes in the short stories by Yevhen Hutsalo one may find the verbal analogues of such painting tools as color dominant, color harmony, lighted up and shaded areas. The dynamics of color solution in a verbal picture, the introduction of new hues and their combinations, and the constructing of light environments help to strengthen the emotional effect of the narration and make some special mood accents. The change of chromatic range and interpretation of painting components of the verbal image liken the narration to the melodious and sound transitions in music and editing tools in filmmaking. The color effects contribute to plasticity of the represented objects or, on the contrary, make their representation less material, give some decorative or symbolic sense to the nature. The story “On the Shining Horizon” may be compared to the cycle of paintings by Oscar-Claude Monet “Rouen Cathedral”. The unsteady landscape of Y. Hutsalo is marked by interpretative activity of the narrator. The landscape descriptions with a less vivid and not too rich, i. e. comparatively weak in terms of stimulating emotions, color range are also endowed with a noticeable expressive potential. In accordance with the requirements of expression in painting the verbal chiaroscuro also may give dynamics to relatively static environment. The paper offers a comparative analysis of the verbal ‘pictures’ and their corresponding paintings-predecessors.


Author(s):  
Emma Scioli

In the second of three chapters examining Athens’ golden-age legacy, Scioli traces how Jules Dassin repeatedly draws attention to the origins of his 1962 melodrama Phaedra in Greek myth and tragedy through visual imagery, as a complement to his 1960 comedy Never on Sunday. Phaedra’s use of ancient Athenian art, and its suggestive modernization of elements from the ancient Athenian tragedyHippolytusand Racine’s 1677 adaptation Phèdre, force a confrontation with a particular modern formulation of the ancient Greek past. Dassin draws upon the golden age to characterize the world of ancient Greece that irrupts into the early 1960s setting of the film both visually and thematically. Rather than fostering nostalgia for a golden age that might prompt a desire for its return, Phaedra presents it as an intrusive presence from which its characters feel alienated, only to demonstrate that they are inextricably bound, in their modern dress, to repeat what the tragic past has prescribed for them. Such self-conscious appropriation of Athens’ literary-dramatic and artistic-material remains informs the tragic belatedness of Phaedra and reflects upon the American expatriate director’s sense of foreignness in the homeland of his lover and artistic muse, Greek actress and activist Melina Mercouri.


Social media platforms enable access to large image sets for research, but there are few if any non-theoretical approaches to image analysis, categorization, and coding. Based on two image sets labeled by the #snack hashtag (on Instagram), a systematic and open inductive approach to identifying conceptual image categories was developed, and unique research questions designed. By systematically categorizing imagery in a bottom-up way, researchers may (1) describe and assess the image set contents and categorize them in multiple ways independent of a theoretical framework (and its potential biasing effects); (2) conceptualize what may be knowable from the image set by the defining of research questions that may be addressed in the empirical data; (3) categorize the available imagery broadly and in multiple ways as a precursor step to further exploration (e.g., research design, image coding, and development of a research codebook). This work informs the exploration and analysis of mobile-created contents for open learning.


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