Importancia de la atención

Closely connected to scholarship on “viewing” Roman art has been work on the cultural practice of “collecting” it: what factors influenced the selection of visual media, styles, and subjects? How were objects collected and displayed alongside each other in the Roman world? And what might these practices reveal about Roman attitudes to visual culture at large? One important response to these questions came in the essays collected in Gelzer and Flashar 1979, discussing the broader cultures of “classicism” in late Republican and early Imperial Rome. Most subsequent studies on Roman collecting have focused on single media—and above all on the display of sculpture. Particularly noteworthy is Neudecker 1988, discussing the combined display of statues and other objects in individual villa contexts, as well as Mattusch 2005, treating instead a single case study (the Villa dei Papiri outside Herculaneum). Where Neudecker provides a detailed topographic catalogue of sculptural finds in individual villas, Bergmann 1995 offers a much shorter analysis of the underlying cultural stakes of collecting and displaying Greek art in Rome, and is particularly noteworthy for dealing with both sculpture and painting together: this makes for an ideal discussion piece among advanced undergraduates. A rather different line of inquiry has focused around issues of trade and supply: the evidence of ancient shipwrecks, often containing cargoes of sculpture and other artworks, has been

particularly important (and no publication more so than Salies, et al. 1994). One of the most exciting aspects of this interdisciplinary topic has been the need to consider archaeological evidence alongside extant Greek and Latin texts. Tanner 2006 (pp. 205–302) makes particular headway here, considering literary and material evidence for Roman practices of collecting each alongside the other, and analyzing what these reflect about ancient concepts of “art” more generally. Prioux 2008 focuses on ancient epigrams on or about art, and is particularly attuned to artistic collecting as a (meta- )poetic trope. Most recently, Rutledge 2012 has analyzed public collections of art (and above all sculpture) displayed in Rome, demonstrating the rich dividends to be had from combining literary and archaeological perspectives (compare also Bravi 2012, cited under *Regional Variations: Rome and Italy*).

Bergmann, Bettina. “Greek Masterpieces and Roman Recreative Fiction.” In Special Issue: Greece in Rome. Edited by Charles Segal. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97 (1995): 79–120. [class:journalArticle]

Just one of several influential essays in a special journal issue dedicated to “Greece in Rome: Influence, integration, resistance.” Bergmann is concerned with the “double life” of Greek objects in Rome; although discussing different media, the article is especially strong on Roman wall-painting, with detailed analysis of the make-believe “picture-galleries” (pinacothecae) of the Villa Farnesina in Rome. Gelzer, Thomas, and Hellmut Flashar, eds. Le classicisme à Rome aux Iers. siècles

avant et après J.C.: Neuf exposés suivis de discussions. Geneva, Switzerland: Fondation Hardt, 1979. [class:book]

In French, German, and English. Proceedings from a landmark 1978 conference on the Roman reception of Greek culture in late Republican/early Imperial rhetoric, philosophy, art. Important for its interdisciplinary breadth (reflected in the recorded questions and discussions after each paper). Particularly influential has been Paul Zanker’s German essay, “Zur Funktion und Bedeutung griechischer Skulptur in der Römerzeit” (pp. 283–314).

Mattusch, Carol. The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum: Life and Afterlife of a Sculpture Collection. Los Angeles: Getty, 2005. [class:catalog]

Detailed catalogue (with high-quality, mostly color illustrations) of the various bronze and marble statuary collected in a particularly important Roman villa, preserved by the Vesuvian eruption of CE 79. Uses formal and technical analysis to

consider origins/derivation, as well as design, with extensive bibliographic references.

Neudecker, Richard. Die Skulpturenausstattung römischer Villen in Italien. Mainz, Germany: Philipp von Zabern, 1988. [ISBN: 9783805309370] [class:catalog] In German (but for an English summary of Neudecker’s conclusions, cf. “The Roman Villa as a Locus for Art Collections”, in The Roman Villa: Villa Urbana, edited by Alfred Frazer, 77–91; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). Comprehensive catalogue of the statues/sculptural fragments from seventy- eight Republican and Imperial villa complexes (pp. 130–247, albeit with only minimal illustrations); excellent introductory chapters likewise survey literary evidence for Roman sculptural collections.

Prioux, Évelyne. Petits musées en vers: Épigramme et discours sur les collections antiques. Paris: CTHS Éditions, 2008. [class:book]

In French. Combined literary and visual exploration of the cultural poetics of collecting, with particular emphasis on Greek epigrams on artworks. Part 1 focuses on three Roman scenarios where images and Greek epigrams were juxtaposed; Part 2 discusses Hellenistic Greek and Latin epigrammatic poetic treatments of artworks. Despite the images and illustrations, the book’s emphasis is very much on ancient literary ideas of artistic collection.

Rutledge, Steven H. Ancient Rome as a Museum: Power, Identity, and the Culture of Collecting. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. [ISBN: 9780199573233] [class:book]

Thematic exploration of Rome as “museum city,” concentrating on the public civic collection and display of artworks; the book associates choices of objects displayed with broader Roman Imperial discourses of authority, power, and legitimacy. Rutledge is much stronger on literary sources than on the archaeology (the book is heavily referenced, but with some serious oversights in bibliography).

Salies, Gisela Hellenkemper, Hans-Hoyer Prittwitz und Gaffron, and Gerhard Bauchhenß, eds. Das Wrack: Der antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia. 2 vols. Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1994. [ISBN: 9783792714423] [class:book]

Chapters in German, French, and English; based on a 1994–1995 exhibition at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn. International experts discuss the spectacular cargo from a shipwreck found off the coast of Tunisia: chapters explore not only the ship (Part 1) and varied cargo (Part 2), but also the Roman market for Greek art (Part 3) and various technical questions concerning the sculptures (Part 4). Lavish illustrations and abundant references.

Tanner, Jeremy. The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society and Artistic Rationalisation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [ISBN: 9780521846141] [class:book]

Tanner’s final two chapters on art as “high culture in Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Empire,” and “art after art history” (pp. 205–302) explore both Hellenistic and Roman collecting practices in terms of contemporary ideas of “art.” Highly stimulating (and sometimes challenging) advanced reading, with particular emphasis on literary sources, with only minimal illustrations.