Roman Portrait Statuary from Aphrodisias by R. R. R. SmithReview by: Christiane L. Joost-GaugierThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 941-942Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479128 .

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Book Reviews 941

broad synthesis, it provides an important framework in which to situate the more concen trated studies of scholars such as Bernard Bailyn, Alan Taylor, Virginia Lee Anderson or collections such as Armitage's and Braddick's. The forty-three images are used judiciously to illustrate the formation of distinctly American culture and imagery that reflects the developing character of the colonies. Each of the twelve chapters has more than a hundred notes referring back to the vast bibliography that, while drawn mainly from secondary sources, still encompasses an impressive array of contemporary accounts, diaries, maps, newspapers, and similar publications as well as some of the most recent scholarship on the Americas.

Roman Portrait Statuary from Aphrodisias. R. R. R. Smith. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2006. 501 pp. e76.80. ISBN 978-3-8053-3527-0.

REVIEWED BY: Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, Washington, DC

The tradition of embellishing architecture with representations of famous men and women is undisputedly significant for the history of art and archaeology. While carefully chosen displays of portrait statues and busts of citizens of renown from the distant and recent past were calculated in their thematic organization to provide remembrance and immortality, their purpose can hardly be construed to have been merely romantic. In fact, portraits that adorned classical structures had an important practical value. Through the use of images of figures of the past, men of the present might at once commemorate their inheritance and strive to inspire similar virtuous deeds in order to bring credit to their cit ies. This system of exemplary memorialization, known since Egyptian times, was well known to the Greek and Roman worlds and would become very popular in Renaissance times in the decoration of municipal edifices, princely palaces, judgment chambers, and throne rooms.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this notion for the Renaissance is the one which has been the least discussed, that is, the question of what visual examples from antiquity Renaissance humanists had in mind. It appears that at that time no actual antique precedent had survived. This lack of physical evidence was somewhat mitigated by the numerous ancient literary descriptions-Herodotus, Xenophon, Pliny, Varro, Cicero and others which enabled Renaissance humanists to imagine the visual evidence.

Located in southwest Turkey, Aphrodisias-an inland site on a high plateau at Caira, near the boundaries of ancient Lydia and Phrygia-provides a perfect example of the importance of portrait statuary in ancient times. Following its long prehistory, the core of this once heavily fortified ancient city came to be focused on a mound that may be regarded as a predecessor to an acropolis. In recent years the evidence provided by the large amount of high-quality and extremely well-preserved marble statuary discovered there has made it clear that by late antique times, Aphrodisias had a well-developed monumental urban cen ter and accompanying social structure, and was one of the major sculpture centers of the Greco-Roman world. Much of its statuary was made with stone from nearby quarries, which was used to adorn sanctuaries, porticoes, baths, a handsome odeon, a large theater, a gymnasium, a basilica, and a school, as well as several elaborate domestic structures distin guished also for their mosaics. These structures were arranged in what appears to have been a highly developed grid plan. This discovery, now ongoing in terms of continuing excava tions, is of enormous significance for both the history of art and archaeology for it docu

ments an ideal example, appropriately diversified, of high-quality sculptural works of a

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942 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIX/3 (2008)

major center of the eastern Roman empire. The importance of this abundant surviving material at Aphrodisias has been revealed

by the ongoing excavations and intense archaeological activity of recent decades, first led by Kenan Erim from the 1960s through the 1980s, and now led by R. R. R. Smith of Oxford University and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. The work of Smith in the field of Roman archaeology and Hellenistic sculpture has been well known to students of ancient art, especially since his revision of Gisela Richter's basic book on the subject. The new discoveries of the excavations under his leadership at Aphrodisias have been docu mented and published in journal articles and monographs since the 1980s. As a result, the physical and aesthetic significance of these civic statues can now be studied in detail. The men and women represented in these honorific images were members of the local elite; their agglomeration and the fastidious attention paid to their description in these pages demonstrates an exemplary urban society under the Roman Empire.

The handsome volume publishes all the surviving marble portrait sculpture from Aph rodisias that has been discovered to date, much of it for the first time, including headless bodies, torsos, and fragments that appear to be the lone survivors of honorific marble images. The flowering of this portraiture at Aphrodisias appears to have taken place from the late first century BCE through the third century CE, when their production began to decline dramatically. Thus, the chronological plan of the volume is based on the actual his tory of the amazing portrait production of this remarkable site.

An introductory chapter, accompanied by elegant and precise site maps, sets out the scope, aims, and methods of this volume and offers an archaeological evaluation of the excavated areas of this site. It considers in great detail the topographical distribution of the finds and their relevance for the individual structures they once decorated. The abundance of information provided makes it possible to set out a reconstruction of the range of sub jects implied by these statues as well as their functions. For the latter, inscriptions are, of course, important. The inscriptions, most of them on the statue bases, make explicit the honors that the statues were intended to memorialize. These, in turn, provide a deep reser voir of information concerning the standards, purposes, and reasons for statue use in the city. As their commissioners explained to posterity, the awardees were recognized for their exemplary citizenship. Nor are the practicalities of the production techniques of the marble carving business at Aphrodisias ignored. We learn much about the quarries themselves, as we do about the quality of the marble and the ways in which the torsos and their attach ments were carved, finished, and joined.

A second chapter considers the relation of the statues to the physical and political his tory of the city where, though they referred to their Greek past and Roman present, their

meanings appear to have been clearly related to the wishes and expectations of the local populace. Maps and illustrations of find locations as well as line drawings offer the reader a continuously lively reconstructive basis for relating the buildings to the sculptures that adorned them. An elaborate attached appendix presents an invaluable table that interlocks chronology with commission and the various categories of honor.

The following five chapters constitute a catalogue, including the remains of 108 stat ues, forty-nine busts, and sixty-three detached heads, divided into appropriate categories. To these, chapters on busts, herms, and detached heads are added.

All in all, this is a serious and important work that exemplifies the ideal and complex interconnections between art history and archaeology. Its enormous value is enhanced by the many black-and-white plates of exceptional beauty, including a magnificent cover photograph.

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