Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World [Hardcover]

This book explores the juxtapositions of image and text in a wide variety of ancient works of art.Art historians and epigraphers come together to explore the juxtapositions of image and text in a wide variety of ancient works of art. They look at the wider question of how words and images interacted in the ancient world and the competing demands they made on ancient viewers.Art historians and epigraphers come together to explore the juxtapositions of image and text in a wide variety of ancient works of art. They look at the wider question of how words and images interacted in the ancient world and the competing demands they made on ancient viewers.The ancient visual environment was packed with instances where words and images appeared side by side: statues with dedicatory inscriptions, labels on paintings or mosaics, or complex juxtapositions of images and engraved texts on funerary monuments. In the past these elements have often been divorced from one another and studied in isolation. In this volume art historians and epigraphers have come together to look at the complex ways in which images and words interacted with one another, illustrating, explaining or reinterpreting each other or, conversely, making competing demands upon the viewer. Their essays range widely in their focus from archaic Greek pottery through Hellenistic honorific statues and Pompeian wall-paintings to Late Roman mosaics. The insights that emerge contribute to our wider picture of the relationships between art and text in the ancient world, as well as illuminating the complexity and variety in ancient material culture.Introduction Zahra Newby; Part I. Inscribing Images, Illustrating Texts: Juxtapositions of Text and Image: 1. The problems with honouring Samos: an Athenian document relief and its interpretation Alastair Blanshard; 2. Idem ego sum discumbens, ut me videtis: inscription and image on Roman ash chests Glenys Davies; 3. A painted garland: weaving words and images in the House of thlS+