Saturday, September 28, 2019

Roman Portraits in Vienna

Rome
Drusus Major
ca. AD 20
glass cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Demetrius of Phalerum
ca. 100 BC - AD 100
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Livia Drusilla with bust of Augustus
ca. AD 14-29
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"For before the historian can try to make valid use of a visual source, however undemanding, however simple, he has to know what he is looking at, whether it is authentic, when and for what purpose it was made, even whether it was considered to be beautiful.  He also has to have some awareness of the circumstances, conventions and constraints that always govern what can be represented in art at any given time and of the technical means that are available to the figurative artist for expressing his vision."

– Francis Haskell, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (Yale University Press, 1993)

Rome
Augustus
1st century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna


Rome
Socrates
ca. 50-25 BC
carnelian intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Aristotle
1st-2nd century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Claudius
ca. AD 41-54
chalcedony cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Julia the Elder
ca. 2 BC
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Caracalla
ca. AD 211-217
aquamarine intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Commodus
ca. AD 180-192
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Antinoüs
ca. AD 135-137
bronze coin from Stratonikeia-Hadrianopolis
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Hadrian
ca. AD 117
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Gemma Claudia
(Claudius, Agrippina the Younger, Germanicus, Agrippina the Elder)
AD 49
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Julia Mamaea
ca. AD 222-235
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna