IMAGINES PICTAE. IL RITRATTO NELLA PITTURA ROMANA

This project aims to reconstruct the development of painting portraits in Rome and the use of these types of image employed for Romans, from the Republic until the end of the third century AD. The portrait painted in Roman art follows the cultural changes and the limits of the Empire, mingling with artistic traditions from different cultural areas. The study of this subject, which presents profound difficulties, is often wrongly considered as a sub-argument of the theme of the statuary portrait in Rome. The painted portrait deserves a study as an independent subject because in Antiquity the painting was "l’arte guida". The old painting is now little known because most of the works have been lost and it makes the painted portrait difficult to reconstruct. The lack of archaeological sources relating to the genesis of this art form is filled by some Greek and Roman literary sources. For the imperial period archaeological evidence is more abundant, as in the case of Fayum portraits, which, however, are limited to the province of Egypt, or frescoes found in several important archaeological sites in the Mediterranean (the more valuable were found at Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabies, but also in Syria).