Visualizing Statues in the Late Antique Roman Forum
Visualizing Statues in the Late Antique Roman Forum
During late antiquity, the statues populating urban public space forged
a distinct local identity for each city in the Roman empire. Nowhere
did the prestige lent by statuary resonate with historical memories more
clearly than in Rome itself, where imperial portrait statues
predominated in the Roman Forum. “Visualizing Statues in the Late
Antique Roman Forum” showcases the results of research investigating the
political connotations of restitution as expressed in both statuary
displays and imperial rituals during the fourth and fifth centuries CE.
Statues governed perceptions of the architecture and the public areas
of the Forum, which now can best be noted through a virtual environment
that reconstructs the built context for open-air installations. A
crucial factor to consider involved the rare occasions on which emperors
visited Rome during the fourth century CE, when rulers mostly resided
in other capitals. Ritual ceremonies such as jubilees, triumphs, and
honorific events were all celebrated in Rome on significant but rare
occasions. Formal panegyrics read aloud in praise of emperors correlate
with the terminology of praise in inscriptions written on the bases
that supported statues. The digital models featured in this web site
functioned initially as an environment in which research was conducted
on the correlations between rituals and statues. The same visualization
serves now as the platform in which to display the results featured in
this web site.
The research conducted for “Visualizing Statues in the Late Antique
Roman Forum” was pursued with generous funding provided by the National
Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The inspiration can be traced back
to the digital models of the architecture in the Roman Forum created
by a team led by Diane Favro and Bernard Frischer beginning in 1997.
After the completion of the “Digital Roman Forum” in 2005 that
provided online access to the highly detailed digital models, the NEH
supported a Summer Institute at UCLA entitled “Models of Ancient Rome”
taught by Favro together with Sander Goldberg and Chris Johanson. One
outcome of the seminar was a series of discussions about ways to
continue the research on the Roman Forum by focusing on the
experiential issues raised by statues and the ritual use of public
space during late antiquity. Through the Fellowships at Digital
Humanities Centers program, the NEH funded Gregor Kalas’s year-long
research at UCLA’s Experiential Technologies Center to pursue this
research in collaboration with Favro and Johanson.
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