Arranged topically rather than chronologically, the English translation of Paul Zanker’s concise and highly accessible review of art in the Roman world is a valuable contribution and will appeal to students and general readers alike. Divided into seven main chapters, Zanker examines both political and non-political imagery as seminal elements in a “system” of visual communication. As he states in the introduction, much of his approach is indebted to the earlier studies of Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli and, more recently, Tonio Hölscher (Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: The Center of Power. Roman Art to A.D. 200, trans. Peter Green, London: Thames and Hudson, 1970; Tonio Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art: Art as a Semantic System in the Roman World, trans. Anthony Snodgrass and Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004). His goal, as stated clearly at the outset, is not to determine the “native” or Roman qualities of Roman art, but rather to underscore the socio-historical conditions that contributed to the unique and prolific output of sculptors, painters, architects, and other artisans of the Roman era.

In stark contrast to most texts on Roman art that typically begin with an obligatory review of the precedents set by Etruscan artists and patrons, the first chapter of Zanker’s book immediately addresses the impact of both direct contact with and Roman appropriation of impressive quantities of Greek sculpture, painting, luxury items, and even architectural pieces during the late third and early second centuries BCE. For Zanker, Roman art truly came of age as a result of the post-conquest pillaging of Greek cities on the mainland, in southern Italy, and on Sicily during imperialistic expansion into the Mediterranean. While early artworks assigned to “Italic” artists are briefly discussed (most notably the “Brutus” and “Arringatore” bronzes), Zanker’s focus on influential Greek works and Greek artists who immigrated to Italy or were brought there as slaves is both thought-provoking and fresh. The importance of paideia—cultured learning—in the Roman education system and the creation of spaces for otium, or peace and rest, in Roman villas, spaces packed with Greek-made or Greek-inspired imagery, place the Hellenic influences firmly within Roman social and architectural contexts.

Zanker’s excellent review of the pieces from the Villa of the Papyri is most noteworthy. Rome’s reformulated fantasies of “Greece” were in many ways more influential and long-lasting reinterpretations of Greek culture and art than the Hellenistic world’s reimagined “Greece.” “Otium now meant enjoying carefully constructed spaces in which one could encounter Greece as an imagined ideal—a kind of ‘superior world’” (33). Following a brief but delightful survey of adaptations of famous Greek works as embellishments for Roman quotidian objects, the chapter wraps up with a curious discussion of the famous Trajanic circus funerary relief. Rather than exploring the concurrent non-classicizing languages of Roman art, Zanker argues that the awkward, unrealistic composition of this relief was due to inexperienced sculptors deliberately rejecting omnipresent classical models in order to create new, more legible forms. The underlying and intriguing issue of why some carvers dismissed preexisting and evidently popular Greek prototypes is not fully addressed. Were such choices dictated by the purpose of the piece or the desires of the patron, perhaps in combination with other conditions, such as workshop training?

The title of chapter 2, “The Representations of Power and Prestige: Conflicting Images,” recalls similar language found earlier in Zanker’s The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (trans. Alan Shapiro, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988). While the focus of this section is on aristocratic competition in the late Republic and the resulting changes in the architectural landscapes of Rome and the provinces, the most valuable discussion relates to stylistic diversity. Here Zanker explores not only the deliberate combinations of disparate architectural forms in selected monumental structures (i.e., the Mausoleum of the Iulii at Glanum), but also the amalgamation of styles in public portraits of Republican elites, specifically the juxtaposition of Hellenistic heroic nude types with veristic portrait heads. Not much is necessarily new here, but the topic is handled succinctly and well. The chapter ends with Zanker’s dismissal of any clear connection between verism as a portrait style and the wax death masks mentioned in Pliny the Elder (Natural History 35, 6–7), much to this reviewer’s relief.

The third chapter begins with the more coherent political art produced during the reign of Augustus and the adoption of body types as interchangeable and easily understood “role costumes” for imperial identities (citizen, priest, military leader, merciful conqueror, and god). Zanker observes that official, individualized portraits quickly became more important as conduits for advertising evolving ideological themes, while body types gradually became more generic and symbolic. In his review of imperial images of war, barbarians, and statecraft, Zanker argues that panels such as the famous vertical slabs that once decorated a monument commissioned by Marcus Aurelius and the spiraling scenes on the Column of Trajan clearly illustrate the Roman penchant for images that simultaneously elevate and memorialize reoccurring, significant state ceremonies, activities, and rituals. “No Roman will have ever scrutinized the reliefs as a modern archaeologist does, or examined them for their ‘message’” (102). There is little “history” in Roman historical reliefs—a conclusion with which most Roman art historians would agree. Zanker also reminds readers that state monuments were frequently understood as gifts to the emperor from communities and more restricted groups such as the Senate; the impact of this gift-exchange model, expressed earlier in studies by Paul Veyne (Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, trans. Brian Pierce, London: Penguin, 1990), is an important but often overlooked characteristic of official art in Rome.

After his excellent discussions of the major themes of public art during the Republican and imperial eras, Zanker turns his attention to the decorated atmospheres of the Roman house. At the start of chapter 4, he reminds readers that the more private spaces of the domus evolved into increasingly important loci for patrons’ expressions of individual identity and authority, especially after most major public offices and military triumphs became the prerogative of associates of the imperial court. Private homes, as Zanker notes, were deliberately embellished with sculptures, illusionistic frescos, painted panels, ornate furniture and dinnerware, mosaic-covered floors, and molded-stucco ceilings; interior domestic décor was intended to assist the homeowner and visitor alike to escape the harsher realities of everyday life and the burdens of negotium, the engagement in work and effort. With respect to mythological imagery in Roman domestic contexts, Zanker reminds readers that the vast majority of fantastical figural subjects in Pompeian frescos revolved around love (Venus), merriment (Dionysus), or Homeric epic, and, as such, reflected the status, values, and education of both the patronus and his community.

Chapter 5 introduces readers to the archaeology of death and commemoration. Zanker sees the communal lust for eternal memorialization originating with the conspicuous tombs that lined the major roads of Rome during the late first century BCE (e.g., the tombs of Caecilia Metella and of Eurysaces). Outside of Rome, he notes that Italian cemeteries gradually evolved into more isolated burial areas, often monumentalized by columbaria and extravagant mausolea, and related epitaphs and imagery were designed for much more restricted audiences. This change from public to private viewership, in turn, resulted in an increase in painted interior walls and carved mythological sarcophagi: “In their new secluded setting, away from the public gaze, the scenes chosen for funerary contexts could now be selected to reflect the feelings of the mourning relatives at the grave” (157). As with the architecture of the High Empire, interest shifted from emphasis on the exterior to the interior, both structurally and metaphysically.

Leaving the confines of Rome and Italy, chapter 6 investigates art in the provinces. After introducing the traditional binary of the more Roman-influenced West and the “Hellenized” East, Zanker focuses on the material impact of the imperial cult. Towns, cities, and sanctuaries throughout the empire established temples, porticos, and portrait statues dedicated to the worship of the emperor and the imperial household. Zanker notes that while accepted classical models continued to thrive and spread alongside the popularity of the cult, albeit with relatively minor local adaptations, such universal Greco-Roman forms were by and large ignored in conservative Egypt, a province that clung to its Pharaonic visual traditions. In the funerary realm, Zanker astutely observes that tombs in the provinces never disappeared behind walled cemetery complexes as in Italy, but rather continued to be constructed for wide-scale public viewing, intriguing evidence for provincial identities and local notions of individuality that still deserves more thorough study. Zanker concludes this dense chapter with a brief but important discussion of sculptural schools as evidenced mainly through the production of stone sarcophagi in Attica, Caria, and Phrygia. Most fascinating are his comments on drill use (or the limited use thereof) in Athenian carving workshops, a technical signature that one can also find on selected pieces carved from Pentelic marble in Rome.

The final chapter of Roman Art, unlike most other surveys, focuses on the circumstances that lead up to the art of Constantine and thereby provides readers with a concise and most welcome review of art in the third century CE. Zanker describes the rapid succession of different imperial portrait types following the death of Septimius Severus as “a fumbling search for a new mode of representation” that “can be seen as an expression of the perceived inadequacy of the old images and as an urgent desire for a new order” (187). Portraits of Caracalla and Gallienus are highlighted as informative of a new attitude wherein individualized portraits of the provincial elite were created to unsympathetically reinforce political order and proclaim some semblance of economic control. Zanker argues, correctly in my view, that the abstract neo-classicism of Constantinian art began in earnest with the “fumbling search” for relevant political images during the often turbulent power wrangling of the third century.

Paul Zanker’s Roman Art is an excellent survey of the major themes surrounding the uses, displays, and styles of images in their Roman contexts. The small book is lavishly illustrated with many crisp color photographs as well as black-and-white illustrations and lengthy, informative captions for works and monuments typically covered in most introductory college-level courses.