A large team of researchers and collaborators was formed to work with the PI and his partners to carry out the different strands of research in the first 20 months. Important partnerships have been established with institutions in Italy and abroad (Verona, Rome, London, Paris, Copenhagen) to visit their collections and to study, photograph and 3D scan a selection of sculptures and coins for the research. With some institutions RESP has also started to define common research strategies on certain fields of investigation, such as the collaboration plan with Frankfurt University's Biga Data Lab to use Artificial Intelligence software for facial recognition of Roman emperors on coins to analyse how their portraits in the provincial cities diverged from the ones made in Rome.
The project’s website has been published and the database has been developed to host the data collated by the researchers to generate catalogues and all the materials to be used in the project's publications. The database is divided in two sections to cover all the evidence of imperial representation in full-figure and on provincial portraits in the provinces. The dataset collated in the first 36 months of research includes around 4.000 entries with thousands of images, ranging from the Julio-Claudians (31 BC - AD 68) to 2nd and 3rd century emperors and empresses.
An entire strand of research focusses on using three-dimensional data to try to reconstruct the genesis of provincial portraits by recreating the process by which a sculptor would have modelled a portrait on a bi-dimensional reference. The researchers in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Verona have designed an interface capable of automatically reconstructing a virtual 3D model of an imperial portrait in the round from the bi-dimensional profile portrait of a coin. The aim of this process is to study the relationship between portraits of the same emperor on different visual media and to understand how they might have originated from a shared model, particularly in the provinces, where the Roman prototypes that inspired provincial copies may have been altered by local artists and adapted to local needs.
Many outputs have already been produced on the work done so far. All the researchers have contributed to promoting the project and disseminating its preliminary results at international conferences in Rome, Leiden, Vienna, Princeton, including major events such as the 16th International Numismatic Conference in Warsaw (September 2022) and at the American Institute of Archaeology Annual Meeting in Chicago (January 2024). Six articles have been published in major international journals, another three have been already accepted for publication and will come out later in 2024, at least another three are in preparation to be submitted by the end of the year. Furthermore, the RESP has secured a publication agreement with Brill (Leiden-Boston) to produce no fewer than four monographs written by the team members and one edited volume gathering papers by the RESP researchers, the members of the advisory board and a number of leading scholars in the research fields investigated by the project (the genesis, reproduction, dissemination and post-classical reception of the imperial image in Rome and in the provinces). The volume is based on the papers delivered at the RESP international conference organised by the PI and his team, which was held at the University of Verona on 6-8 September 2023.
