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Verism and the Ancestral Portrait*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

David Jackson
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Extract

The subject of the so-called ‘veristic’ portraits of the late Republic holds a special fascination for the classical art-historian, especially on the vexatious question of the origins of the style; a question which still remains, essentially, open and unsolved. Yet despite the thoroughness with which the topic is debated, one possible influence upon the emerging veristic style, that of the ancestral portrait, continues to receive inadequate consideration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , April 1987 , pp. 32 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

Notes

1. For a full bibliography on Roman Republican portraiture see Hiesinger, U., ‘Portraiture in the Roman Republic’, ANRW 1, 4 (1973), pp. 820–5Google Scholar.

2. Hinks, R., JRS 54 (1934), 232Google Scholar.

3. Gombrich, E. H., Art and Illusion (London, 1960), p. 107Google Scholar.

4. I use I. Scott-Kilvert's translation in the Penguin Classics series (Harmondsworth, 1979).

5. I use H. Rackham's translation from the Loeb Classical Library (London, 1952).

6. Jitta, A. N. Zadoks-Josephus, Ancestral Portraiture in Rome (Amsterdam, 1932), p. 27Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., pp. 47–48.

8. No works of this type have been identified after the early decades of the 1st century A.D.

9. Zadoks-Jitta, op. cit., is the earliest full exposition of the theory. Drerup, H., ‘Totenmaske und Ahnenbild bei den Romern’, RM 87 (1980), 81–129Google Scholar, has most recently re-stated the view, although in a somewhat more straightforward and severe form.

10. Most notably Hekler, A., Greek and Roman Portraits (London, 1912)Google Scholar and, on various occasions, Richter, G. M. A., ‘The Origins of Verism in Roman Portraits’, JRS 45 (1955), 39–64Google Scholar; ‘Who made the Roman Portrait Statues? Greeks or Romans?’, PAPhS 95 (1951), 184–208Google Scholar; ‘Late Hellenistic Portraiture’, Archaeology 16 (1963), 25ffGoogle Scholar.

11. Richter, , JRS 45 (1955), Plates VI–XGoogle Scholar. But cf.Cook, R. M.Greek Art (London, 1972), p. 154Google Scholar, who suggests that one such example of ‘Greek verism’, the Athenian priest portrait, shows a consciously aesthetic arrangement to the features, similar to works found elsewhere in Greece.

12. Breckenridge, J. D., ‘Origins of Roman Republican Portraiture’, ANRW, op. cit., p. 844Google Scholar.

13. Smith, R. R. R., ‘Greeks, Foreigners, and Roman Republican Portraits’, JRS 71 (1981), 24–38Google Scholar.

14. Cook, , op. cit., pp. 154ffGoogle Scholar., and Robertson, M., Greek Art (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 183ffGoogle Scholar., both feel that the patron's role was possibly significant but is unverifiable.

15. Just how convoluted and perplexing the general question of stylistic development is may be seen in the complex division of portraits into groups, reflecting their principal stylistic components and combinations, based on a limited framework of coin images, and posited by Schweitzer, B., Die Bildniskunst der römischen Republik (Leipzig, 1948)Google Scholar, which gave currency to such unhelpful terminology as ‘Painterly-Pathetic’, ‘Plastic-Idealistic’, ‘Plastic-Stronger’, and ‘Appendage-Aesthetic’. Hiesinger, , op. cit., p. 811Google Scholar, regards this as the most stable base from which to approach the problems of stylistic development, Smith, whilst, op. cit., p. 28Google Scholar, comments that ‘few feel any confidence in it’.

16. Hinks, R. P., Greek and Roman Portrait Sculptures in the British Museum (London, 1935)Google Scholar, and Goldscheider, L., Roman Portraits (London, 1945)Google Scholar were early to investigate alternative influences whilst maintaining the superior impact of Greek technical and artistic abilities.

17. Boëthius, A., ‘On the Ancestral Masks of the Romans’, Acta Archaelogica 13 (1942), 226–35Google Scholar.

18. Hiesinger, , op. cit., p. 815Google Scholar.

19. Breckenridge, , op. cit., pp. 826–54Google Scholar. For a fuller debate see his Likeness: A Conceptual History of Ancient Portraiture (Evanston, 1968)Google Scholar.

20. Brilliant, R., Roman Art from the Republic to Constantine (London, 1974), pp. 166ffGoogle Scholar., is typical of many surveys which remain receptive but undecided.