Nathaniel B. Jones – författare

The artistic category of relief has long dominated scholarly discussions of ancient Greco-Roman art for good reason: images in relief pervaded ancient visual culture from the rise of the Greek city-state through to the Christian era. They are witnessed in public and private contexts; terracotta, bronze, and stone media; techniques as varied as incision, modelling, or repoussé; and scales from the miniature to the monumental. Precisely because of the ubiquity and fluidity of ancient relief, the category as such has not been given full consideration in own right, and many questions have remained under-theorized. Boasting an international cast of contributors, this volume addresses key questions about relief across the geographic and temporal scope of the ancient world, including how relief was conceptualized within antiquity, what role materials and techniques played in its creation, and what the relations were between relief media and their effects on viewers.

In the first centuries BCE and CE, Roman wall painters frequently placed representations of works of art, especially panel paintings, within their own mural compositions. Nathaniel B. Jones argues that the depiction of panel painting within mural ensembles functioned as a meta-pictorial reflection on the practice and status of painting itself. This phenomenon provides crucial visual evidence for both the reception of Greek culture and the interconnected ethical and aesthetic values of art in the Roman world. Roman meta-pictures, this book reveals, not only navigated social debates on the production and consumption of art, but also created space on the Roman wall for new modes of expression relating to pictorial genres, the role of medium in artistic practice, and the history of painting. Richly illustrated, the volume will be important for anyone interested in the social, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of artworks, in the ancient Mediterranean and beyond.