Portraying the Individual in the Roman East

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.

List of Illustrations

Portraying the Individual in the Roman East: Local-Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Rubina Raja

1. Roman ‘Mummy Portraits’ — Panel Paintings, Painted Shrouds, and Stucco Masks: The Appropriation of the Graeco-Roman ‘Individual Portrait’ by the Death Industry of Roman Egypt
Christopher H. Hallet
2. Portrait Mummies from Antinoöpolis as Evidence for Élite Interaction between Egypt and Syria
Barbara E. Borg
3. Locally Crafted Empires: The Case of the Palmyrene Portrait Habit and the Legacy of Greek Art
Rubina Raja
4. Putting Portraits in the Big Picture: Otacilia Severa and Faustina the Elder in Palmyra
Julia Lenghan, Olympia Bobou, Rubina Raja, and Dario Calomino
5. Theoi Sebastoi Olympioi: Hellenising Imperial Images in the Greek East
R. R. R. Smith
6. Portraying the Emperor — Seeing the Emperor: Between Typology and Individuality in a Colossal Portrait in Sagalassos
Jane Fejfer, Jeroen Poblome, anf Peter Talloen
7. The Portrait Statues from the Artemision at Messene — Expressing Identity and Representing Power
Olympia Bobou and Christopher Dickenson
8. Funerary Portraits from Hierapolis in Syria
Michael Blömer
9. The Other Half of the Empire: On Early Depictions of Individuals in Sepulchral Art in the West
Dietrich Boschung
10. Funerary Portraits on the Rhine in the First Half of the First Century AD: Sartorial Expressions of Cultural Awareness and Ethnic Belonging
Maureen Caroll
11. Citizens, Emperors, and Gods: Portraiture in the Roman Central Balkans
Nadežda Gavrilović Vitas
12. From Periphery to Centre Stage: ‘Zenobia in Chains’ (1859) by Harriet Hosmer and ‘The Death of Cleopatra’ (1876) by Edmonia Lewis
Amalie Skovmøller