Читать книгу A History of Roman Art онлайн

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provenance

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Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.

Most dates assigned to works of art from the Roman world are not absolute. That is, they are not linked to a firm calendar, but are relative, determined by comparing an art work to one or more other examples with more or less similar characteristics. This gives us a series of relative, and sometimes very insecure, dates all based on some key works of art. When the dates of those key works are questioned, it has the potential to throw the whole system off. A case study in that issue is one of the most iconic works of Roman art, the Capitoline Wolf statue. This bronze statue of the she‐wolf that saved Romulus and Remus, on display in Rome since 1471, has long been a staple work of art history texts. It has been republished and discussed for over two hundred years as an Etruscan masterpiece of the fifth century BCE.

Some authors have argued that it was in fact the same piece of sculpture mentioned by the Roman politician/author Cicero in the first century BCE. Since 2006, however, the scholarly world has reevaluated this based on a number of arguments including the type of casting process and the results of scientific tests such as thermoluminescence dating. These combined with reexamination of the style of work have led to new conclusions that the wolf is actually a medieval work, not an Etruscan one, perhaps dating to the thirteenth century CE. Thus, if they are correct, this work was misdated by as much as 1800 years and is eliminated as an ancient piece of sculpture, let alone a famous one. This sort of reevaluation is an important part of art historical study and it means that the field is constantly changing.