imagery
imageryThe identification of scenes in sculpture, painting, and the minor arts has long been a major activity of classical archaeology, although it has traditionally been accorded less emphasis than the identification of artists' hands. In all the figurative arts conventional schemes were developed, sometimes under the influence of near-eastern iconography, for portraying particular mythological figures and episodes, and the use and development of these schemes can now conveniently be studied through the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologi ae Classicae (=Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, 1981–
). Individual artists exploited conventional imagery not simply by replicating it, but by playing variations on a theme or by echoing the conventional scheme for one episode when portraying a different one. An extreme form of this is iconographic parody.
The origins of particular...
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