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The Roman Emperor Seen From the Provinces. Imaging Roman Power in the Cities of the Empire from Augustus to the Tetrarchs (31 BC-AD 297)

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RESP (The Roman Emperor Seen From the Provinces. Imaging Roman Power in the Cities of the Empire from Augustus to the Tetrarchs (31 BC-AD 297))

Période du rapport: 2023-03-01 au 2024-08-31

The main question addressed by the project is how the images of Roman emperors were transferred from Rome to the provincial territories and were reproduced and disseminated among the local communities. The serial reproduction of the imperial image is a striking phenomenon of visual duplication well-attested both on coinage and in sculpture. The relationship between these media (as well as other ones less documented in archaeology, such as paintings, gems and other objects), which must have involved the use of common models, is however only vaguely understood. The project is combining traditional research methodology with digital advances in three-dimensional reproduction to reconstruct the genesis and diversification of imperial portraits in the provinces during the first three centuries of the Empire (from the reign of Augustus to that of Diocletian, c. 31 BC - AD 297) by focussing on the combined evidence of coinage and sculpture. The research addresses this question in a completely different way from how it has been done in the past, by adopting a ‘peripheral’ perspective, which emphasises the cultural, religious and artistic background of the local communities in the imperial provinces rather than the traditional ‘central’ one generated in Rome.
The overall objectives of the project are: to produce the first narrative of the representation of Roman emperors on visual media in the provinces; to shed light on the methods of manufacture and distribution that underpinned Roman imperial image-making; to reassess the forms and influences of provincial cultural and artistic diversity, and their relation to the wider culture of the Roman Empire; to develop and implement a new research methodology in the field of digital humanities for the study of ancient portraiture.
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.
The research strand that studies imperial portraiture in the Roman provinces has produced advances beyond the state of the art and has the potential to generate ground-breaking results.
For each member of the imperial family examined in the research the project has produced the first ever typological study of the portraits adopted on the coins of the provincial cities. Moreover, in some cases, both in the Julio-Claudian period (31 BC-AD68) and in the 2nd century AD, there are compelling examples of coin portraits linked to sculptural images of the same emperor/empress, which either refer to each other or reflect shared models. Examples like these suggest that it in some cases the local workshops of coin engravers and marble carvers may have relied on the same model, a local copy of a metropolitan prototype which can, however, be regarded as an original product of provincial art.
The research has also progressed beyond the state of the art in exploiting 3D technology to investigate the image-making process in the Roman empire. Using 3D scans of sculptures as well as 3D scans of coins which show for the most part only profiles, the project is exploring different strategies to try to recreate the original models and the processes of dissemination. For this purpose, a novel methodological approach was designed in the first part of the project, which is using a digital morphable model of a human face to generate a portrait in the round from the 3D data acquired from the profile of a coin portrait. This is a generative model for face shape and appearance which can be trained by the computer to automatically fit to the facial features from a certain design. The RESP researchers have created an interface capable of detecting the most distinctive facial features of an emperor’s profile portrait on a coin and to generate a model in the round from them through the morphable model. Initial tests were done on portraits of emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138) and on the emperor Carausius (AD 286-293), whose portraits have survived exclusively on coinage, to try to reconstruct what his image on a sculpted portrait in the round would have looked like.
The project's logo is inspired by an image of a Roman emperor being worshipped in the provinces