A01=Christopher H. Hallett
Author_Christopher H. Hallett
Category=AFKB
Category=AGA
Category=DSBB
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780199240494
- Weight: 1127g
- Dimensions: 196 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 29 Sep 2005
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Statues of important Romans frequently represented them nude. Men were portrayed naked holding weapons - the naked emperor might wield the thunderbolt of Jupiter - while Roman women assumed the guise of the nude love-goddess, Venus. When faced with these strange images, modern viewers are usually unsympathetic, finding them incongruous, even tasteless. They are mostly written off as just another example of Roman `bad taste'.
This book offers a new approach. Comprehensively illustrated with black and white photographs of nude Romans represented in a wide range of artistic media, it investigates how this tradition arose, and how the nudity of these images was meant to be understood by contemporary viewers. And, since the Romans also employed a variety of other costumes for their statues (toga, armour, Greek philosopher's cloak), it asks, `What could nudity express that other costumes could not?' It is Hallett's claim that - looked at in this way - these `Roman nudes' turn out to be documents of the first importance for the cultural historian.
Christopher H. Hallett is Associate Professor of History of Art and Classics at the University of California at Berkeley.
