Last Statues of Antiquity

[First posted in AWOL 5 May 2012, updated 23 April 2019]

Last Statues of Antiquity (LSA)

Here you will find a searchable database of the published evidence for statuary and inscribed statue bases set up after AD 284, that were new, newly dedicated, or newly re-worked. This database was completed and made public in May 2012 (with only some minor revisions thereafter).

To access the site, click on one of the buttons above: BROWSE, SIMPLE SEARCH, or ADVANCED SEARCH (or, if you need them, INSTRUCTIONS).

We do not have the funding to up-date this resource continuously, but would welcome hearing of additional material, or of substantive corrections, by your emailing <LSA@classics.ox.ac.uk>. This database is built on the published work of hundreds of scholars, whom we hope to have credited fully and correctly; if you are unhappy with our use of your material, do please contact us.

The database was constructed by a team working partly in Oxford and partly elsewhere. The person primarily responsible for each entry is named on each Discussion page, and we would be grateful if you would acknowledge their work when using their ideas. For details of the team see the team page.

We suggest that in print you cite individual database entries, and the team members responsible for them, in the following way:

http://laststatues.classics.ox.ac.uk, LSA-833 (J. Lenaghan), LSA-42 (C. Machado & U. Gehn, LSA-1170 (G. de Bruyn), etc.

(Please note that the LSA number allocated to each entry is arbitrary, and was determined only by the sequence of cataloguing.)

The LSA database was constructed as part of a major project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom.

• Welcome
• Instructions
• Browse
• Simple Search
• Advanced Search

The Parthenon Frieze Repository

 [First posted in AWOL 3 February 2012, updated 1 January 20915]

The Parthenon Frieze Repository

The Parthenon Frieze Repository repository is an organized infrastructure of digital content, that offers free access to cultural material. The repository was carried out by the National Documentation Centre (EKT) and the YSMA-Acropolis Restoration Service of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The repository provides the possibility of immediate access to the frieze, both as a database for scholars and, as digital games for schools and their pupils. The Parthenon Frieze, a unique work of art, is also presented in the website www.parthenonfrieze.gr, which utilizes new technologies to present and elevate cultural content online.

	Stone Block Numbering
	Subject
	Museum
	Frieze Sides
	Games
	Educational booklets
	About Parthenon
	About Parthenon Frieze
	Bibliography
	Glossary
	Contributors

Identify Imperial Portraits

Identify Imperial Portraits

Sebastian Heath, NYU/ISAW
Introduction

Put simply, this page collects 3D models of Roman imperial figures so that students can gain skills in identifying them. It is part of a sequence and readers are encouraged to begin on the coin identification page.

The portraits shown below come from the following institutions or collections: Capitoline Museum, Corinth Museum, Getty Villa, Metropolitan Museum of Art, an Art Institute of Chicago via Anonymous Loan from Private Collector, North Carolina Museum of Art, Vatican Museums, and Yale University Art Gallery. The 3D models are generated from personal photographs and images from wikipedia/flickr or were dowloaded from public internet sources.

    

The above [click through] model of a portrait now on display in the Getty Villa, and images of a coin, now in the collection of the American Numismatic Society, both show an image of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. Click on the model and rotate it to view Augustus in profile. That emphasizes the similarity of the small numismatic portrait and the larger sculptural representation. Also note that the coin identifies its subject. Specialists use such "self-identifying" Roman coins to identify portraits. Follow this same procedure for the unidentified portraits below.

One hint before you start, none of the portraits shown below are also of Augustus. That would be too easy.

Egyptological Publications of the Glyptothèque Ny Carlsberg København

[First posted in AWOL 14 September 2011, updated 26 May 2014]

Four Volumes of the Publications de la Glyptothèque Ny Carlsberg København
courtesy of the Oriental Institute Research Archives

• vol. 1: Otto Koefoed-Petersen, Les stèles égyptiennes, Copenhague, 1948 
• vol. 3: Otto Koefoed-Petersen, Catalogue des statues et statuettes égyptiennes, Copenhague, 1950
• vol. 4: Otto Koefoed-Petersen, Catalogue des sarcophages et cercueils égyptiens, Copenhague, 1951
• vol. 6: Otto Koefoed-Petersen, Catalogue des bas-reliefs et peintureségyptiens, Copenhague, 1956

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.

• Introduction
• Ritual Experience
• Spatial Context
• Mapping Statues
• Inscription Database

Project

• About
• Methodological essays
• Reconstruction notes
• Acknowledgements

Resources and Related Projects

• HyperCities
• HyperCities User Guide
• Digital Roman Forum

References

• Bibliography
• Epigraphic references

Online Catalogue of the sculptures in the Archaeological Museum of Salonica

Catalogue of the sculptures in the Archaeological Museum of Salonica
G. Despinis - T. Stefanidou-Tiveriou - E. Voutiras

The Archaeological Museum of Salonica holds one of the largest and most diverse collections of ancient sculpture in Greece. This is caused by the fact that the holdings of the collection derive from a wide geographical range. Most of the sculptures emerged in and around the city of Salonica, but objects found in various sites of the ancient landscapes of Macedonia and Thracia were also added to the Museum's inventory. Therefore it is possible to regard the collection as reasonably representative for the sculpture of the north-Aegaean area up to the Propontis to some extent. Chronologically the sculptures cover the complete range of ancient art, from the archaic period (2nd half of the 6th century BC) all the way up to the late antiquity (4th and 5th century AD). Therefore, in 1989, three professors of archaeology (G. Despinis, Th. Stefanodou-Tiveriou and E. Voutiras) initiated a research program in order to gather the complete collection of antiquities of the Archaeological Museum of Salonica, as well as to catalogue and publish it. Thanks to the active support of Ioulia Vokotopolou, the ephor in charge, the required permission from the central administrative bureau for the antiquity service (ΚΑΣ) was soon granted so that it was possible to tackle the project in 1990. Until 1998, the gathering and studying of the material was funded by a public research program. Additional financial assistance was rendered by the Cast Museum of the University of Salonica. The superintendents as well as the staff of the museum always helped benevolently. Since 1998, Prof. B. Schmidt-Dounas has also been working in the editorial department and the group of contributors has extended to doctoral candidates within the department of Archaeology in the University as well as to employees of the Archaeological Service.
The main goal of the project is to publish a scientific catalogue with all sculptures of the Archaeological Museum of Salonica. So far, four volumes are planned. The first was published in 1997, the second in 2003. The third volume is in preparation.

Meanwhile, the register, which is kept in the Cast Museum of the University of Salonica along with the photographical archive, contains about 1500 entries. The objects were newly measured, described and recorded. The sculptures were photographed from several different perspectives, whenever possible from all four sides. The information concerning their origin was systematically rechecked to the extent available.
Besides preparing the catalogue, it seemed useful to use a database, in order to make it easier to use the archive and to enable the connection with similar projects. This task was tackled in cooperation with the CoDArchLab. Consequently, the Arachne website made the part of the archive that was already published electronically available to an even wider public.

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