Inaugural Lecture - Professor Ben Russell: 'Roman sculptors at work'

Roman sculptors have received something of a raw deal in scholarship on ancient art: Pliny the Elder was largely uninterested in contemporary Roman artists—the ‘big names’ he focuses on are almost all Greeks of the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC; Winckelmann regarded Roman artists as largely just copiers of earlier works, contributing little new or interesting; even today, while there are four monographs dedicated to the techniques of Greek sculpture, there is no comparable study of Roman sculpture. Roman sculptors, however, oversaw an unmatched florescence of their craft. 

While we know of few ‘big name’ sculptors, we have a range of datasets—inscriptions, archaeological evidence, and the working traces left by sculptors on their works—that shed light on a world of ancient craftspeople, their lived experiences, and working practices. The first half of this talk will focus on the social, economic, and physical contexts (from quarries to workshops) in which these sculptors operated. In the second half Professor Russell will turn to the city of Aphrodisias, famed for its marble, and an ideal laboratory for exploring the working world of Roman sculptors.