Rethinking re-carving: revitalising Roman portraits in the third century

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Eric Varner, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2023-08-01
• Publisher: Scienze Lettere
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: (c) 2023
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): https://doi.org/10.5617/acta.10435
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 19
• Start Page: 119
• End Page: 146
• Keywords: Late Antiquity; Roman portraits; re-carving; Antiquity; spolia; recycling; portraits; Roman sculpture
• Research Categories: History, Ancient; Art History

Abstract

Research on the re-use of Roman material culture has often focused on repurposed architectural elements or re-carved portraits, and new approaches have increasingly focused on culture, context and memory with praxis, agency meaning, materiality, and reception as key issues. Sculpted portraits have been key players in the scholarly discourse beginning with the portraits of Rome’s ‘bad emperors’ such as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian reconfigured as a result of damnatio memoriae in the first century. The third century, however, proves to be a critical moment that witnesses a shift towards affirmative interventions that seek to refurbish and access the positive and legitimising aspects of the original images. Portraits are now redacted from likenesses of ‘good emperors’ such as Augustus, Hadrian, and Trajan to invoke the venerable authority of the imperial past. Private portraiture in the third century also provides evidence for secondary interventions not motivated by denigration but by the prestige of re-use. In a funerary context, the reconfiguration of portraits could confer ancestral honour and status. Ultimately the reuse of portraits, both imperial and private, can be read as highly creative revitalising acts of positive recycling.