Praetorian at villa albani?

[DL Cooper Studios]

WOW! hock: My money is on the ancient sculptor that probably had a Praetorian living down the hall of his insulae, rather than a guy living 2000 years later that only has random stuff dug up from here and there.

Those of you that are knocking the ancient sculptors, here's a little notion for ya: We learn all most everything we know about ancient cultures through the work of artisans. It is the paintings, sculpture, pottery and coinage that inform us of the lives of these people. Writings are rare, often are not contemporary to the subject or have been edited extensively throughout the ages. Most important: Pictures are worth a thousand words!

Why is Roman sculpture unreliable? Are you saying that all ancient art is historically unreliable? Should we throw out all that we have learned from art? Disregard all knowledge gleaned from cave paintings, Assyrian temple reliefs, Egyptian tomb paintings and the pottery of Greece? That's a whole lot of history books that need rewriting; better get to it!

Let me ask this: If segmentata is found by archaeologists, is that evidence that it is the only style used or that it was the best ?Maybe the segmenatata that was found by the archaeologist was from a crappy armorer, Slippyslyus, the guy that sells discount armor out of the back of his donkey cart.

Like most artisans, I throw out version, after version, after version, until I get it right. If 2,000 years from now, all other sculptures are lost and all that is ever found are my failures in the trash bin, does that make mine the best and only sculptures that ever existed? NOPE!

As for the helmet: I have been doing research for a sculpture of Scipio Africanus. On all the coinage, where he is wearing a helmet, he is wearing a Corinthian. I found that very interesting.


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[caiusbeerquitius]

Why is Roman sculpture unreliable? Are you saying that all ancient art is historically unreliable? Should we throw out all that we have learned from art? Disregard all knowledge gleaned from cave paintings, Assyrian temple reliefs, Egyptian tomb paintings and the pottery of Greece? That's a whole lot of history books that need rewriting; better get to it!

Roman sculpture is very reliable. But it is not photorealistic. Interpreting it needs a sound knowledge about how it was produced, and how it was coded, and how it was passed on. That´s what the long education at university is about/for in Classical archaeology and in art history. In the end it then makes the difference between a "professional" and a "layman". But, as with every other profession, there are good laymen, and bad professionals. That said, the method for interpreting art is just that, a method. If you want to understand ancient art or objects, you must use the necessary methods, otherwise you will most certainly come up with something that is wrong. It´s as simple as that.

A simple example. Do you think Greek horses really looked like that?

We learn all most everything we know about ancient cultures through the work of artisans.

Could you back you statement up? I was under the impression we learned most from the Ancient authors, followed by remnants of material culture, just a smaller portion of which are work of artisans.

[DL Cooper Studios]

Back it up? A little confrontational don't cha think? :roll:

Okay, I have only personal experience from working with historians, curators and archeologists on replica armor and sculptures for museums. But that experience is extensive and based in both Greek and Roman history.

NEVER in my experience has an archeologist, historian or curator handed me text to read when they hire me. The show me pictures. Some are of excavated examples, but the vast majority are images from sculpture, paintings, pottery or coinage.

Writing has been the domain of the elite classes whether they were religeous or political. What has survived? The history of the culture's leadership, their political maneuverings and ancenstory. In many cultures common everyday life of the populace was considered trivial and not worthy of documenting. The labor classes were illiterate. So, there is little written about them.

I did say: Writings are rare, often are not contemporary to the subject or have been edited extensively throughout the ages.

The percentage of verifiable contemporary writings is minute compared to the hundreds of thousands of artifacts that can be studied. You are far more likely to learn the techniques of an ancient Egyptian potter by seeing tomb images of him working, than you would by trying to find a fragment of text describing in words how he made his pottery.

Artistic images in decoration and on everyday tools was how the ancients communicated information about their lives. They couldn't write and the elite didn't care about documenting what they saw as mundane.

I don't want to high-jack this thread, because it's not about this... :lol:

[jkaler48]

Statues do not necessarily depict things as they were but may be in an idealized or styled version for example Washington never dressed like this:
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[DL Cooper Studios]

Geeez people! :roll: All I am saying is that the blanket statement that all art works are not reliable for research is absurd!

Here's this for you...who is in that photo? George Washington, right? How do we know that? Because painters and sculptors provided that image. All of his contemporary portraits, no matter the artist have given us a man we can recognize as Washington. It is stylized, but it is Washington. There is valuable information there.

On pot is a horse. How do we know it is a horse? Because it looks like a horse. If you had never seen a real horse and only saw the pot, you could still go into barnyard and pick out the horse as the same animal that is on the pot. The image is pretty darn close to the real thing. Is it stylized? Yes. Is it so stylized that you would confuse it for a goat, a cow or a chicken? No.

I was only responding to what Mcbishop wrote:You can see a whole slew of these artistically stylised segmentata representations in Lorica Segmentata 1. They signify nothing, other than the ability of sculptors to stylise. Reproduction cuirasses made from such images are, I'm afraid, no better than fantasy armour.



I objected to that silly absolutist statement. I don't beleive that artworks should be the only resource either. I never said that.

Y'all carry on discussing the very cool relief that was the topic...I am going to get back to work....SCULPTING!

[caiusbeerquitius]

All I am saying is that the blanket statement that all art works are not reliable for research is absurd!

That is a ignoratio elenchi, I´m afraid. Nobody said so.

I was only responding to what Mcbishop wrote:You can see a whole slew of these artistically stylised segmentata representations in Lorica Segmentata 1. They signify nothing, other than the ability of sculptors to stylise. Reproduction cuirasses made from such images are, I'm afraid, no better than fantasy armour.

But Mike is absolutely correct. A reproduction or reconstruction needs to be based on actual finds of objects. You cannot reproduce an object that is not extant. If you copy from art it all becomes quickly questionable. On the Villa Albani relief you can easily assess the problem yourself by asking the following questions:

1. What material is the displayed armour made of?

2. What colour is the soldier´s clothing?

3. What kind of helmet is he wearing?

Answers to these questions would be necessary for a reconstruction or reproduction, but, unfortunately, cannot be given. So, one may gain some information from such a relief, but it needs to be carefully cross-refernced with actual finds and other data.

NEVER in my experience has an archeologist, historian or curator handed me text to read when they hire me. They show me pictures. Some are of excavated examples, but the vast majority are images from sculpture, paintings, pottery or coinage.

Well, I would say that is logical. You are a sculptrix. It wouldn´t make much sense to hand you a copy of the Codex Theodosianus for this purpose, right? However, were it not for the texts, we would know as much about Rome or Greece as we know about Hallstatt culture, e.g.
And that is very little.

On pot is a horse. How do we know it is a horse? Because it looks like a horse. If you had never seen a real horse and only saw the pot, you could still go into barnyard and pick out the horse as the same animal that is on the pot. The image is pretty darn close to the real thing. Is it stylized? Yes. Is it so stylized that you would confuse it for a goat, a cow or a chicken? No.

That was not my question. My question was:

Do you think Greek horses really looked like that?

As you can now see, from your own argument, the same is the case for armour. Of course I could pick out the segmentata out of different armours, like a hamata, a plumata etc. But this does not mean that the depiction is accurately showing a segmentata. It is "so stylised that you would not confuse it for a hamata, plumata or squamata."

Here's this for you...who is in that photo? George Washington, right? How do we know that? Because painters and sculptors provided that image. All of his contemporary portraits, no matter the artist have given us a man we can recognize as Washington. It is stylized, but it is Washington. There is valuable information there.

If I transfer this argument to the Villa Albani relief, it sounds like this:
"... what is on that relief? Armour, right? How do we know that? Because painters and sculptors provided that image, and because we found actual examples. All these sources have given us that information so we can recognise it as armour. It is stylised, but it is armour. There is valuable information there."
Hm.
Taking relief photorealistic, is what Raffaele D´Amato does in his book quoted above.
Arms and Armour of the Imperial Roman Soldier from Marius to Commodus
So it is full of mistakes, since the assumption of photorealism is combined with loads of teleological argumentation and circular reasoning.

[Caballo]

All,

The debate on material finds vs iconography is a really interesting one. But please tone this conversation down- it's getting close to unacceptable. Thanks!

Rules of forum here

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat.html?fu...857#202857

Cheers

Paul

[mcbishop]

I was only responding to what Mcbishop wrote:You can see a whole slew of these artistically stylised segmentata representations in Lorica Segmentata 1. They signify nothing, other than the ability of sculptors to stylise. Reproduction cuirasses made from such images are, I'm afraid, no better than fantasy armour.


I objected to that silly absolutist statement. I don't beleive that artworks should be the only resource either. I never said that.

Hmmm, difficult to see which bit of what I said there was silly or absolutist... but then I'm not a SCULPTOR ;-)

Mike Bishop

[DL Cooper Studios]

I am learning a great deal...Thanks!
I was defending my vocation, a little too staunchly, may be
Sculptrix...never heard that before. Kinda saucy, I like it!

[caiusbeerquitius]

That´s great! That´s what this forum is for :-D

[cavi]

gents...
we let reproduce and reproduce self our stuff accurate and all of these are copies from finds. i dont know why some people think we copy a relief 1 to 1 voidly seen the finished work. we never said that.

in case of the relief of the villa albani we can discuss about the status of the soldier; is it a praetorian, or a normal soldier? or a officer?

so we think its a praetorian soldier, not a officer because his sword its on the right, and with the helmet he looks like someone representative. we can discuss about that, no problem.

about the material, its not so complicate, because we have some finds, segmentata, helmet, sword etc. we have all and can and may combine this. this stuff we let reproduce from erik könig (www.replik-online.de). His work is very accurate and surely not fantasy, have a look.

over 1 year ago we start with the research of this relief and starts to reproduce. sure, its not simple and cheap. but also not complicate. we need time and when its finished, we will show you here our results and you can discuss about fantasy or not!

guet nacht!