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Details of Roman Sculpture1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

A series of photographs, not retouched, of the details of dated monuments of the Roman Empire. Not an excessive demand for a student of Roman sculpture to make : the kind of apparatus—a good thesaurus—which a student of language would possess in his earliest studies at a university. But although it could be made with a fraction of the labour expended on any thesaurus, nothing like a scientific corpus of details yet exists or is contemplated; and this must serve to justify the publication of that which was begun in leisure some years ago as an elementary aid to private study, incomplete, and without immediate prospect of completion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright ©Bernard Ashmole 1928. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 179 note 2 Obstacles to the completion of the series are the scarcity of monuments of certain periods, the scarcity of monuments of all periods which are in their pristine condition, and the frequent impossibility of finding external evidence for dating.

page 180 note 1 Some two hundred photographs at present. Both negatives and prints are free from retouching. Even the best half-tone blocks inevitably show something less than the photographic prints from which they are made : but Mr. Emery Walker's admirable half-tones on pl. XVII, which have not been retouched or forced up in any way, convey a very fair idea of the kind of detail which these photographs give.

page 180 note 2 It is inevitable that certain pieces which can only be dated approximately will also be of high illustrative value, and must be included. But they should not be confused wth the key pieces.

page 180 note 3 My thanks for much generous assistance and for permission to use the photographs are due to the authorities of the following collections: in England, the British Museum and the Ashmolean; in Rome, the Terme Museum, the Vatican Galleries, the Museums on the Capitol and the Museo Barracco; and, in Vienna, the Kunsthistoriches Museum and the Museum of the Belvedere. On plate XVII, 1 and 2 are specimen details of the statue of Augustus from Prima Porta (Vatican); 3 and 4 of reliefs from the Hadrianeum (Palazzo dei Conservatori); and 5 and 6 of a bust of Commodus (Palazzo dei Conservatori).