Stephanie Moser – författare

Inspired by newly discovered antiquities of the ancient world exhibited in the museums of Europe and celebrated in the illustrated press of the day, the leading British history painters Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Edward Poynter and Edwin Long created a striking body of artworks in which archaeology was a prime focus. Of the growing community of historicist and classicist painters in mid-nineteenth century Britain, these artists expressed a passion for archaeological detail, and their aesthetic engagement with ancient material culture played a key role in fostering the enthusiasm for antiquity with wider audiences. Painting Antiquity explores the archaeological dimension of their paintings in detail, addressing how the relationship these artists had with ancient objects represented a distinctive and important development in the cultural reception of the past. The book also considers the inspiration for the movement defined as "archaeological genre painting," the artistic and historic context for this new style, the archaeological sources upon which the artworks were based, and the critical reception of the paintings in the world of Victorian art criticism. Alongside extensive visual evidence, rendered here in both striking color and black-and-white imagery, Stephanie Moser shows how this artistic practice influenced our understanding of ancient Egypt. Further, she argues that these paintings affected the development of archaeology as a discipline, revealing how the painters had an intense engagement with archaeology, representing artefacts in extraordinary detail and promoting the use of ancient material culture according to an aesthetic agenda. The issues raised by placing importance on concepts of beauty and decoration, over values such as rarity, function, or historical use continue to divide archaeologists and art historians in the present day. Ultimately, by demonstrating how the artistic dialogue with antiquity contributed to defining it, Painting Antiquity sheds important new light on the two-way exchanges between visual representations of the past and knowledge formation.

Pictorial reconstructions of ancient human ancestors have twin purposes: to make sense of shared ancestry and to bring prehistory to life. Stephanie Moser analyzes the close relationship between representations of the past and theories about human evolution, showing how this relationship existed even before a scientific understanding of human origins developed. How did mythological, religious, and historically inspired visions of the past, in existence for centuries, shape this understanding? Moser treats images as primary documents, and her book is lavishly illustrated with engravings, paintings, photographs, and reconstructions.In surveying the iconography of prehistory, Moser explores visions of human creation from their origins in classical, early Christian, and medieval periods through traditions of representation initiated in the Renaissance. She looks closely at the first scientific reconstructions of the nineteenth century, which dramatized and made comprehensible the Darwinian theory of human descent from apes. She considers, as well, the impact of reconstructions on popular literature in Europe and North America, showing that early visualizations of prehistory retained a firm hold on the imagination—a hold that archaeologists and anthropologists have found difficult to shake.

Envisioning the Past: Archaeology and the Image is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that brings together archaeologists, art historians and anthropologists to provide new perspectives on the construction of knowledge concerning the antiquity of man. Covers a wide variety of time periods and topics, from the Renaissance and the 18th century to the engravings, photography, and virtual realities of todayQuestions what we can learn from considering the use of images in the past and present that might guide our responsible use of them in the futureAvailable within the prestigious New Interventions in Art History series, published in connection with the Association of Art Historians.

Envisioning the Past: Archaeology and the Image is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that brings together archaeologists, art historians and anthropologists to provide new perspectives on the construction of knowledge concerning the antiquity of man. Covers a wide variety of time periods and topics, from the Renaissance and the 18th century to the engravings, photography, and virtual realities of todayQuestions what we can learn from considering the use of images in the past and present that might guide our responsible use of them in the futureAvailable within the prestigious New Interventions in Art History series, published in connection with the Association of Art Historians.