Portraying the Individual in the Roman East

Local-Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (1st-4th Centuries AD)

Raja, Rubina (ed.)

While the statues and busts of Rome have long captivated scholarly attention, the extraordinary diversity of portraits produced across the empire’s so-called peripheries has remained underexplored. As new discoveries and research projects, such as the Palmyra Portrait Project, expand our understanding of provincial visual culture, fresh questions emerge about the nature, function, and interpretation of Roman period portraiture.
This volume revisits portraiture by looking beyond the Roman empire’s core to its vibrant borderlands, revealing how traditions of representing the individual varied dramatically across cities, regions, and time. The contributions gathered here examine both adherence to, and departures from, mainstream portrait conventions, highlighting the creative negotiations between local identities and imperial visual norms, engaging with a wide range of media — sculpture, mosaics, and paintings — and addressing issues such as workshop practices and the circulation of resources. Case studies explore reworking and reuse, the reconstruction of display contexts, and the development of regional visual languages over time. In shifting the lens from centre to regional situations, this volume reveals portraits as powerful expressions of identities and cultural entanglement across the ancient Mediterranean and West Asia.