Courses

The practice of copying is one of the most distinctive features of ancient Roman sculpture. Rather than analyzing this phenomenon simply as a problem of artistic style, this seminar will consider copies and related sculptures as manifestations of the Imperial period’s broader attitudes to form conceived as a means of cultural expression, communication, and experience. To this effect, it will focus on the performative aspects of the notion of mimesis and on its links to ideas of embodiment and enactment. It will consider both Plato’s theory of imitation and its incarnations in the Roman imperial period. In particular, it will investigate the role that mimesis played in ancient pedagogical thinking; its place within performative practices such as dance and oratory; the tension deriving from the difference in social status between different kinds of performers. Of course, artistic style will remain at the core of this exploration: instead of being understood in narrow formalistic terms, however, it will be discussed comprehensively, as a manifestation of lifestyle qua aesthetic phenomenon. Ultimately, the aim of the seminar is to achieve an anthropologically informed re-interpretation of the practices associated with the Roman copying industry—from the production of exact replicas to the use of Greek prototypes for the bodies of portrait statues, and from stylistic eclecticism to the relationship of artistic making with rhetorical theory. Special attention will be devoted to the properly imperial frame of the phenomena: what functions do imitation, replication, variation acquire within the specific cultural system of the Roman empire, and how are they affected by this context? The introductory sessions will review and discuss the most significant episodes in the history of scholarship on Roman copies, from the 19th century to the present.