NORMATIVIDAD DE LA CREACIÓN DE UNA SOCIEDAD LIMITADA

The other type of statuary common to domestic settings in the Roman era, the so-called

idealplastik or idealizing sculptures (mythological or genre), has been studied primarily as a statuary typology in art historical scholarship, and discussed rather infrequently in

specific contexts. This stems in part from early appreciation of these idealizing sculptures

as aesthetic objects. Indeed, many of the idealplastik that now decorate museum galleries lack secure provenance, complicating analytical study.

What is more, art historical analyses in the 18th – early 20th century tended to

examine these Roman-era mythological statues not as distinct objects, but as stand-ins for

lost Greek originals.47 Though this is no longer the case, the larger Roman idealplastik

corpus is still analysed primarily as evidence for Roman copying and manufacture

traditions. Recent work has celebrated innovation within the copying tradition, increasing

the scholarly value of these pieces,48 but most studies remain art historical essays, such

that the context of finds or their display is seldom discussed.49 Reception studies of

mythological statuary in socio-historical and archaeological contexts are thus warranted.

47 _{Ridgway 1984 skillfully problematizes the study of Roman “copies” as Greek originals (Kopienkritik).}

See also Bieber 1977 and Marvin 2008.

48 _{For recent analyses of Roman copies in a broader cultural context with less emphasis on their “Greek”}

ancestry cf. the edited volume of Moon 1995, which brings together a number of essays on the copying traditions surrounding Polykleitos’ Doryphoros through the post-Roman era; see also Kousser 2008, who loosely traces the iconography of Victory in the Roman Empire, though primarily in the public sphere. For thoughtful analyses of the Roman copying tradition and emulation see Gazda 1995; 2002; Perry 2002; Hallett 2005, and especially Bartman 1988 for copies in an Imperial-era Roman domus.

49 _{Context has historically played a secondary role to aesthetics in Roman art history, and this is most}

palpable today in studies of idealizing sculptures and Roman copies. But see important discussions of such pieces in domestic contexts in landmark work by Bartman 1988; Neudecker 1988; Clarke 2003; Stirling

From finds in private contexts such as the domus or villa, it appears that

mythological statuary often decorated homes around the Empire, but it is unclear whether

it served a simple decorative purpose or stood as art objects suffused with meaning.50 It is

also unclear how commonplace mythologizing statuary is across place and period, and

what value such imagery may have enjoyed as antiques in the later Roman era.51

With this brief survey of two common sculpture types found in domestic contexts

in place, I note that most synthetic reviews of domestic statuary finds do indeed trace a

specific genre of sculpture, e.g. miniatures or portraits.52 I do not discount the importance

of such work, but we should acknowledge its limitations, insofar as it often inadvertently

neglects the larger statuary corpus and domestic assemblage to which an individual

portrait or mythological statue belongs. Thus it is that this dissertation attempts to survey

and study the full range of pieces within each domestic statuary assemblage, not

2005. See also several analyses of the Villa dei Papyri (nt. 53). From this work, however, it is clear that domestic assemblages in the Italian Peninsula generally fare better than their provincial neighbors.

50 _{I note here that very few scholars has suggested “meaning” or motivation behind the display of idealizing}

statues. Rather, they are generic contra Bartman 1988; Stirling 2005 in the late antique period; also Kousser 2008.

51 _{The status of renowned antique mythological statuary as cultural or symbolic heirlooms in the late-}

Roman era is beginning to receive attention in the public sphere, but study of antiques in the private sphere still lags behind. I discuss this below (chapter 1, section III.1), proposing that we examine both idealizing antique sculptures, and antique portraits, as cultural heirlooms.

52 _{For detailed genre studies see Bartman 1992 (miniature copies); Stirling 2005 (late antique mythological}

statuettes); Stewart 2003, 223-260 (statuary in domestic contexts with thoughtful problematizing of public vs. private binaries); Fejfer 2008, 89-104 (emphasis on portraiture). In many cases of imperial portraiture, however, the domestic context with which it is associated appears only as an afterthought, cf. Balty and Cazes 2005; 2008; 2012; Aurenhammer 1983; Mastrondonato 2000. The variety within domestic statuary assemblages, I might add, is rarely conducive to our scholarly preference for typological and specialized genre studies, and thus work that deals with multiple genres tends to read like a catalog or survey, cf. Neudecker 1988; Clarke 2002.

necessarily to mark said assemblage as a collection, but to bring attention to the greater

variety which characterizes most domestic sets.

With respect statuary as a feature of or within larger domestic displays, it should

be noted that previous scholarship has been largely confined to the Italian peninsula, in

part because of the level of preservation in the Bay of Naples.53 It may be said that

Pompeii and Herculaneum are virtually synonymous with the Roman private sphere, and domestic archaeology of the “Roman” house broadly is dependent on evidence from this

region. It is somewhat interesting that the Bay of Naples is, however, rarely studied as the

provincial landscape it was.

When attention is made of the provincial context of the Bay of Naples, however, “good” art works are read as synonymous with high culture, like wall paintings of the

Villa of Mysteries at Pompeii or the statuary ensemble of the Villa of Poppaea at

Oplontis. That high culture, in this context, is synonymous with Rome, such that the elite

domini must have had connections to Rome and knowledge of trends in the city. But when lesser quality art objects are found in this region, the owner is assumed to have

53 _{Regional studies are largely dominated by the corpus of domus and villae in the Italian Peninsula, and}

especially the Bay of Naples, cf. Neudecker 1988 (villas); Dwyer 1982 (statuary in Pompeii); Laurence and Wallace-Hadrill 1997 (art in the house and in Pompeii) Clarke 2002 (art in private spheres in the Bay of Naples); Mattusch 2009 (ibid.); Bergmann 2002 (so-called Villa of Poppaea at Oplontis); Warden and Romano 1994 (Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum).

been a modest provincial with a taste for art that imitates elite fashions, that is, provincial

art.54