The Representation of Space in Graeco-Roman Art : Relief Sculpture, Problems of Form, and Modern Historiography

by: Koortbojian, M.

The Representation of Space in Graeco-Roman Art
Relief Sculpture, Problems of Form, and Modern Historiography
Michael Koortbojian
Volume 24 in the series Image & Context

About this book
This book assesses the role of relief in the representation of space in Graeco-Roman artistic practice and its study – from Winckelmann to the mid-twentieth century – when Classical art developed as a theoretical discipline. The role of relief in the history of ancient sculpture has long been acknowledged, yet the problems posed by an engagement with the representation of space have not been a subject of specific and sustained inquiry. Neither a conventional history nor a comprehensive historiography, this book traces the study of relief – of its formal character, its artistic purpose, its aesthetic significance, and its historical treatment. The contribution to scholarship is three-fold: (1) By means of a wide array of examples, the book demonstrates that the visual strategies employed to represent space during the Graeco-Roman period were a continuously evolving repertory tied to the refinement of techniques and the transformation of styles that those techniques brought into being. (2) It examines ideas now commonplace, based on scholarship now long-neglected if not completely forgotten. And (3) it reveals how competing interpretations of the representation of space in relief elaborated new approaches to the monuments and their representations.

Frontmatter

Preface & Acknowledgments

Table of Content

Introduction

1. The Laws of Relief

2. Between Two Planes

3. Insistent Planarity

4. Manifold Forms and Styles

5. The Differing Kinds of Pictorial Relief

6. The Challenge of Depicting Cohesive Space

7. The Rejection of Space

Coda

Notes

Bibliography

List of Figure Sources

Index 1: General

Index 2: Persons

Index 3: Individual Monuments and Works of Art

The Representation of Space in Graeco-Roman Art : Relief Sculpture, Problems of Form, and Modern Historiography

by: Koortbojian, M.

• ISBN-13: 9783111037400 / 978-3-11-103740-0
• ISBN-03: 3111037401 / 3-11-103740-1
• Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2023