The Frame in Classical Art
A Cultural History

This book reveals how 'marginal' aspects of Graeco-Roman art play a fundamental role in shaping and interrogating ancient and modern visual culture.

Verity Platt (Edited by), Michael Squire (Edited by)

9781107162365, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 April 2017

734 pages, 221 b/w illus.
25.6 x 17.9 x 3.8 cm, 1.6 kg

The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.

Part I. Framing the Frame: 1. Framing the visual in Greek and Roman antiquity: an introduction Verity Platt and Michael Squire
Part II. Framing Pictorial Space: Introduction Verity Platt
2. The frames of Greek painted pottery Clemente Marconi
3. Unframing the representation: the frontal face in Athenian vase painting Guy Hedreen
4. Framing the Roman still life: Campanian wall painting and the frames of make-believe Michael Squire
Part III. Framing Bodies: Introduction Michael Squire
5. Framing Archaic Greek sculpture: figure, ornament and script Nikolaus Dietrich
6. Framing and social identity in Roman portrait statues Jennifer Trimble
7. Framing the dead on Roman sarcophagi Verity Platt
Part IV. Framing the Sacred: Introduction Verity Platt
8. Framing divine bodies in Greek art Milette Gaifman
9. How the Gauls broke the frame: the political and theological impact of taking battle scenes off Greek temples Robin Osborne
10. Visual ontologies: style, archaism and framing in the construction of the sacred in the western tradition Jas' Elsner
Part V. Framing texts: Introduction Michael Squire
11. Framing technologies in Hero and Ptolemy Courtney Roby
12. Writing, reading, and seeing between the lines: framing late-antique inscriptions as texts and images Sean V. Leatherbury
13. Envoi: framing 'antiquity' Rebecca Zorach.

Subject Areas: Art forms [AF], History of art: Byzantine & Medieval art c 500 CE to c 1400 [ACK], History of art / art & design styles [AC]