RESISTENCIA ESPECIFICA

The visual is a fundamental and irreducible sphere of human experience through which cultural encounters are played out, perceived and negotiated. Visual culture produced in periods and places of intense and prolonged cultural contact and exchange is a rich source of information for reconstructing the histories of cultural change. Ancient texts are an important source of knowledge about the past, but they are not the only one.94 _{Images also provide an alternative source of knowledge about the past, and offer}

94 _{For example, Seroussi (2016, 6) writes that “[m]any times music tells a different story than texts” and}

further, that studying music can help us move past what he described as the ‘logocentric leaning of Jewish studies.” On both counts, Seroussi may as well have been speaking of images also, and on both counts he would be right.

the possibility of recovering information about lives and experiences that are not reflected in contemporary literary sources.95

Indeed, at the heart of this project is the belief that visual culture, practices, and attitudes toward the visual are a key part of the puzzle for understanding how

communities identified themselves within the broader, dominant cultural world of the Roman Empire. This belief is grounded in a socio-cultural approach to visual culture that affirms that Jewish visual culture is essential for understanding how Jewish communities interacted with the broader cultural world they lived in.96 _{In this regard,}

our approach continues the ‘cultural turn’ in the study of ancient art. This shift has reoriented the discussion of ancient art from concerns of style and symbolism to new questions about the social and cultural dynamics that underlie the creation, use and viewing of images of all kinds.97 _{The following analysis applies a socio-historical}

approach to visual culture primarily through the study of individual Jewish

sarcophagus patrons as historical agents and the choices they made in the contexts of the Roman sarcophagus industry and trade.

As we have already noted, visual culture is not created sui generis. It bears the cultural legacy of previous generations, and the imprints of prevailing ideologies, of

95 _{This is especially true of sarcophagi. See, for example, Huskinson (2015, 3). who writes: “[Sarcophagi] are}

one of the largest bodies of private art from [Rome] to survive, particularly from the third and early fourth centuries, and deal with experiences upon which contemporary written sources rarely touch.”

96 _{Sartre (2005, 277) even suggests that visual culture is among the signs of cultural change that are 'less}

tenuous' than evidence drawn from inscriptions and language.

tastes and preferences within a culture, of cultural exchange with neighboring

communities and peoples, and of uneven power balances between and among peoples— to name just a few of the ways that visual culture is historically inflected. In many ways, visual culture can be usefully compared to pottery. Just as for the archaeologist, pottery is useful not only for dating layers of accumulated history, but can also reveal

information about the habits, trade and cultural exchange of the people who used it, so too can the visual culture used by a group of people be a source of knowledge about their consumption and cultural change.

When we use visual culture in this way, we are rarely asking questions about symbolic meaning (e.g. “What does a rosette symbolize?”). Such questions may factor into the background and it is especially possible to ask some interesting questions about why Jews may have preferred certain motifs and images over others. At the same time, as Zanker and Ewald rightly note, “we can scarcely imagine the effortless and random way in which contemporaries, faced with the plethora of images in tomb chambers, were able to look at them and make associations, depending on the circumstances and mood of the observer.”98 _{Therefore, the recovery of symbolic meaning is not the primary}

goal of my cultural inquiry into sarcophagi and their sculptural programs. Instead, the intent is to use visual artifacts and programs to explore the formation of cultures and cultural change, as well as the negotiation of the identities of individuals and

communities in these contexts. The socio-cultural approach to images that focuses on the relationships between patrons, producers, viewers and visual culture and on issues of patronage, production and reception suggests that as far as funerary art goes, meaning was created as much in “this life, as opposed to the afterlife.”99

One byproduct of the cultural turn in the study of images is that hard and fast distinctions between visual and material culture are difficult to maintain. Material and visual culture affect the senses in overlapping ways, and are produced, consumed and interacted with through similar cultural practices. All material culture is visual, and vice

versa, all visual culture is material. The sarcophagi that are the primary evidence of this

inquiry are visual artifacts and as such they should be approached both as visual and material culture.

On the one hand, sarcophagi are indeed intensely visual and contain images with potent symbolic and social meanings. On the other hand, sarcophagi are material objects as well that were embedded in the cultural and funerary practices of Roman peoples. Speaking more broadly about Roman sculpture, Smith observes that:

“As objects, statues and reliefs generally were made for one of three distinct domains—to honour the gods in their temples and sanctuaries, to honor and commemorate the special dead in cemeteries and at their tombs, and to honour the powerful living in the public sphere of the ancient city. Each statue or relief marked an occasion and articulated a relationship between the buyer and the subject honoured—gods, heroes, mortals, the living and the deceased.”100

99 Öğüş 2014, 113.

Where some would treat visual culture more like texts to be read, possessing inherent and stable meanings that can be deciphered through careful analysis of their

iconography and symbolism, I prefer to treat visual culture more like other objects in the archaeological record, objects that were the result of (and embedded in) human

practices. The connection between material culture and the construction of identities is not straightforward. Things, material culture, are basically neutral. As we have seen, they can be used to “tell together” just as much as they can be used to “tell apart”.101

Furthermore, Roman funerary culture was intensely visual. As Zanker and Ewald explain:

“When, during their visits, family members stepped inside one of the richly decorated sepulchres of the Antonine and Severan periods they found themselves surrounded by a wealth of images, just as they were in their own homes. These images were not only on the sarcophagi, but also on the mosaic floors, on the fresco-painted walls, and last but not least on the stuccoed ceilings.”102

At the same time, very little beyond basic consistency of content and form seems to have motivated the overall visual programs.103 In fact, ‘program’ could be considered too

generous of a term for what are often extremely varied assemblages in which “no thematic sequence is imposed on the observer.”104 _{Zanker and Ewald suggest that the}

visual profusion of Roman funerary culture is better understood “on the one hand as an expression of abundance, and on the other as an encouragement of free association.”105

101 _{Gardner 2007.}

102 _{Zanker and Ewald 2012, 30.}

103 _{Zanker and Ewald 2012, 30-1.}

104 Zanker and Ewald 2012, 31.

In this way, the ancient viewer was invited to ‘free-associate’ in response to the images, and “the thoughts and comparisons evoked by the images… could be applied by the observer as he chose, guided… by whim and personal disposition.”106

This characterization of the visual abundance of Roman funerary culture—and its heterogeneity—is applicable to sarcophagi as well, the sculptural programs of which often bear a number of separate and sometimes unrelated themes.107 Often, secondary

and even tertiary motifs and whole scenes are simply ‘rhetorical embellishments’ driven by ‘narrative excess.’ As Zanker and Ewald point out, “[w]e should be generally wary of wanting to tease a sense out of everything and to discover deep meaning

everywhere.”108