Early Greek Portraiture: Monuments and Histories

FAIN: FT-52791-04

Catherine Marie Keesling
Georgetown University (Washington, DC 20057-0001)

This book uses the evidence of inscribed statue bases to show how portrait statues came to be identifiable as a genre of Greek sculpture over the course of the Classical (ca. 480-323 B.C.) period. Though most scholars believe that portraits were common in the Greek world much earlier, I argue that the real explosion in Greek portraiture took place in the fourth century B.C. The epigraphical evidence sheds new light upon the complex histories of Greek portrait statues. Retrospective honorific portraits of the fourth century B.C. and later have made it more difficult to see that Greek "portrait culture" is largely a phenomenon of the fourth century and later. In addition to being copied by Roman sculptors, Greek portraits were also recycled as portraits of Romans.

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Early Greek Portraiture: Monuments and Histories (Book)
Title: Early Greek Portraiture: Monuments and Histories
Author: Catherine M. Keesling
Abstract: In this book, Catherine M. Keesling lends new insight into the origins of civic honorific portraits that emerged at the end of the fifth century BC in ancient Greece. Surveying the subjects, motives and display contexts of Archaic and Classical portrait sculpture, she demonstrates that the phenomenon of portrait representation in Greek culture is complex and without a single, unifying history. Bringing a multi-disciplinary approach to the topic, Keesling grounds her study in contemporary texts such as Herodotus' Histories and situates portrait representation within the context of contemporary debates about the nature of arete (excellence), the value of historical commemoration and the relationship between the human individual and the gods and heroes. She argues that often the goal of Classical portraiture was to link the individual to divine or heroic models. Offering an overview of the role of portraits in Archaic and Classical Greece, her study includes local histories of the development of Greek portraiture in sanctuaries such as Olympia, Delphi and the Athenian Acropolis.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/classical-studies/classical-art-and-architecture/early-greek-portraiture-monuments-and-histories?format=HB
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781107162235
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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