One must go back to
Ancient Rome in order to study the burgeoning relationships between
art and society at a time when images had already become the dominant
means of expression. Valérie Naas offers us a valuable
critical appreciation of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History,
a key source on ancient art. She thus reveals the role art-as-war-booty
played for the victors who had brought countless statues back
to Rome.
Alexandre Grandazzi
emphatically shows how original was the framework within which
these transfers took place, and he also brings out the political
impact of this form of art that was not yet so named.
The Romans carried off the masterpieces of Greece, but also and
especially they brought back with them a model, stealing thereby
from the vanquished their creative powers while admiring them
to the point of imitating their style and making a host of copies.
By imposing a new context and new edifying figures on this largely
borrowed form of art, the Romans conferred upon it a new role
as a unifier for an empire that was destined to promote “the
Roman way of life.”
