The Phantom Image: Seeing the Dead in Ancient Rome
Patrick R. Crowley
Abstract
How could something as insubstantial as a ghost be made visible through the material grit of stone and paint? Using the figure of the ghost, this book offers a new understanding of the status of the image in Roman art and visual culture. Tracing the shifting practices and debates in antiquity about the nature of vision and representation, it shows how images of ghosts make visible structures of beholding and strategies of depiction. Yet the figure of the ghost simultaneously contributes to a broader conceptual history that accounts for how modalities of belief emerged and developed in antiquit ... More
Keywords: Ghosts, Roman art, Visual culture, Vision, Representation, Perspective, Belief, Gender, Sarcophagi, Funerary art
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 | Print ISBN-13: 9780226648293 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2020 | DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226648323.001.0001 |
