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Roman Artists, Patrons, and Public Consumption: Familiar Works Reconsidered ed. by Brenda Longfellow and Ellen E. Perry

2022; Classical Association of the Middle West and South; Volume: 117; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tcj.2022.0019

2327-5812

Carol C. Mattusch,

Classical Antiquity Studies

Reviewed by: Roman Artists, Patrons, and Public Consumption: Familiar Works Reconsidered ed. by Brenda Longfellow and Ellen E. Perry Carol C. Mattusch Roman Artists, Patrons, and Public Consumption: Familiar Works Reconsidered. Edited by Brenda Longfellow and Ellen E. Perry. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 255. Hardback, $75.00. ISBN: 978-0-472-13065-8. These nine essays, dedicated to Elaine K. Gazda, cover fascinating subjects, some well known, others less familiar. Brenda Longfellow and Ellen E. Perry stress the importance of visual analysis and context in “Roman Art Reconsidered” (1–12); the authors challenge many assumptions. Jennifer Trimble emphasizes style and technique in “Beyond Surprise: Looking Again at the Sleeping Hermaphrodite in the Palazzo Massimo” (13–37). The carving of the back is “flowing, curvaceous,” attracting the viewer, but the front, “choppy and angular” (17), repels. Are the other eight large-scale hermaphrodites carved in this way? Trimble does not see the sculpture as a direct reference to the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, yet the combination of soft young woman and adolescent boy were provocative. The setting would have been a peristyle garden, part of a staged ensemble of architecture, frescoes, plants and water features. “Dismembering a Sacred Cow: The Extispicium Relief in the Louvre” (38–62) is a painstaking analysis of the only known Roman illustration of extispicy. Melanie Grunow Sobocinski and Elizabeth Wolfram Thill consider two original fragments, post-antique restorations, 16th-century drawings of lost fragments and hypothetical sketches of missing parts. They discard the traditional early 2nd-century date, finding closer parallels in 3rd-century medallions. Better black-and-white illustrations are sorely needed. Diana Y. Ng’s “The Salutaris Foundation: Monumentality through Periodic Rehearsal” (63–87) is about an inscription from the Great Theater at Ephesos recording a monetary gift to the city from C. Vibius Salutaris in 103/4 CE for 30 silver statuettes. They were to be paraded through the city periodically, starting and ending at the Artemision. Interest from the capital was also to be distributed, but recipients had to be present. The point was “to build the monument of Salutaris in mental space” (84). [End Page 495] Lea M. Stirling, “From Mystery Masterpiece to Roman Artwork: The Journey of the Aspasia Statue Type in the Roman Empire” (88–116), catalogues 39 examples from public and private contexts, three with portrait heads and current hairstyles. She compares Aspasia with two popular male types, the Omphalos Apollo and the Discobolus, not with classicizing Roman female types which, like Aspasia, provided stock bodies for portraits. Stirling raises the red flag of “an assumed original bronze statue” (111). Elise A. Friedland analyzes “The Sebaste Apollo: Form, Function, and Local Meaning” (117–141). The 1.5-m marble ephebe with long hair, side-locks and bow and quiver probably came to the city ca. 200 CE. Friedland argues that it was carved in the late 2nd or 3rd century, “a Roman creation that draws on earlier works and styles” (131), and must have been imported to Sebaste in “this marble-bereft region” (138). Marble and struts suggest an origin in Asia Minor: the white marble was carved ingeniously to incorporate a large black vein down the back (pl. 5.1). “At Face Value: Painted Ladies on Pompeian Walls” (142–165), augmented by eight color plates, addresses the vexed question of more than 100 painted female heads, most painted between 10 BCE and 79 CE, and rarely appearing alone. Bettina Bergmann finds that some have personalized features or represent mortals as goddesses, others are paired with deities or with mythological scenes, still others have attributes such as a stylus or jewelry. The last is “the sophisticated literate woman who… is visually anchored in the historical moment by social signs of her community,” opposed to one bordering between goddess and human (160). Molly Swetnam-Burland offers the possibility of opposing views in “Marriage Divine? Narratives of the Courtship of Mars and Venus in Roman Painting and Poetry” (166–190). Mars and Venus were apparently the ideal couple. Swetnam-Burland focuses on the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto, considering the Latin literary tradition...