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Department of Classics

The University of Colorado, Boulder

READING LIST FOR GRADUATE COMPREHENSIVE EXAM IN ROMAN ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY

*updated on 7/19/04

Monument and site identifications: Students should demonstrate general knowledge of the basic characteristics of style, iconography, function and design in Roman art and architecture from the Republic to the Constantinian period.   For useful surveys with ample illustrations and dates, refer to the following handbooks:

Ramage, N. and A. Ramage, Roman Art(2004, 4th edition)

Strong, D., Roman Art (1980)

Henig, M., ed., Handbook of Roman Art (1983)

Sear, F., Roman Architecture (1982)

Essays:  Students should demonstrate advanced knowledge and critical reading of THREE areas of Roman art and archaeology.

REQUIRED for all students:

I.       Ancient Sources and Modern Historiography:

Pollitt, J., The Art of Rome c. 753 B.C. – A.D. 337 Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1966 and reprinted in 1983

Isager, Jacob, Pliny on Art and Society. The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of Art. Odense University Classical Studies, Volume 17. Odense: Odense University Press, 1991

Brendel, O., Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art, New Haven : Yale University Press,1979

Rowland, Ingrid D. and Thomas Noble Howe, Vitruvius. Ten Books on Architecture.   Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999

In addition, select TWO of the following areas:

II.       Republican and Imperial Architecture

1. Jones, M. Wilson,  Principles of Roman Architecture.   London and New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2000
2. Anderson, J., The Historical Topography of the Imperial Fora, Latomus, 1984
3. MacDonald, W., The Architecture of the Roman Empire, vols. I (Yale University Press, 1982 2nd ed.) and II (Yale University Press, 1987)
4. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996
5. Zanker, P., Pompeii: Public and Private Life. Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider.   Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1999
6. Boatwright, M., Hadrian and the City of Rome, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987
7. Alcock, S., Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993
8. Boethius, A., Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture, Penguin, 1978.

III.      Republican and Imperial Sculpture      

1. Kleiner, D., Roman Sculpture, Yale University Press, 1992
2. Koeppel, G., “Grand Pictorial Tradition of Historical Representations,” ANRW II.12.1 (1982), 507-35.
3. Ridgway, B. S., Roman copies of Greek sculpture: the problem of the originals, Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1984
4. Rose, C. B., Dynastic art and ideology in the Julio-Claudian period, Cambridge University Press, 1997
5. Nodelman, S., “How to read a Roman Portrait,” in D’Ambra, E., ed., Roman Art in Context: An Anthology, Prentice-Hall, 1993
6. Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, University of Michigan Press, 1988
7. Bartman, E., “Sculptural Collecting and Display in the Private Realm,” in Gazda, ed., Roman art in the private sphere : new perspectives on the architecture and decor of the domus, villa, and insula,University of Michigan Press,1991
8. Torelli, M. Typology and Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs, University of Michigan Press, 1982
9. Gazda, E., The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Supplementary Volume I.   Ann Arbor:  The University of Michigan Press, 2002

IV.      Painting and Mosaics

1. Ling, R., Roman Painting, Cambridge University Press, 1991
2. Ling, R., Ancient Mosaics.   Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1998
3. Holliday, P., “Roman Triumphal Painting: its function, development, and reception,” Art Bulletin, v. 79 (Mar. 97): pp. 130-47
4. Clarke, J., The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C. – A.D. 250: Ritual, Space and Decoration, University of California Press,1991
5. Bergmann, B., “The Pregnant Moment: Tragic Wives in the Roman Interior,” in Kampen, N., ed., Sexuality in Ancient Art, Cambridge University Press,1996
6. Bergmann, B., “Painted Perspectives of a Villa Visit: Landscape as Status and Metaphor,” in Gazda, ed., Roman Art in the Private Sphere,University of Michigan Press,1991
7. Cohen, A., The Alexander Mosaic: Stories of Victory and Defeat, Cambridge University Press, 1997

V.        Coins, Gems and Metalwork

1. Harl, K., Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East, University of California Press,1987
2. Bieber, M., “The Development of Portraiture on Roman Republican Coins,” ANRWI.4 (1973) 871-98
3. Pollini, J., “The Gemma Augusta: Ideology, Rhetorical Imagery and the Creation of a Dynastic Narrative,” in P. Holliday, Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, Cambridge University Press, 1993
4. Wallace-Hadrill, A., “Image and Authority in the Coinage of Augustus,” JRS 76 (1986): 66-87
5. Howgego, C., Ancient History from Coins, New York : Routledge, 1995, Chapter 4, 62-87
6. Burnett, A., “Buildings and Monuments on Roman Coins” in Paul and Ierardi, eds., Roman Coins and Public Life Under the Empire, University of Michigan Press, 1999
7. Greene, K., The Archaeology of the Roman Economy, University of California Press, 1986,chapter 3 (“Coinage and money in the Roman Empire”)
8. Kuttner, A., Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus: The Case of the Boscoreale Cups, University of California Press, 1995

VI.       Art and Architecture in Late Antiquity

1. Banchi-Bandinelli, R., Rome, the late Empire; Roman art, A.D. 200-400. Translated by Peter Green, New York, G. Braziller, 1971
2. L’Orange, H. P., Art Forms and Civic Life in the Late Roman Empire,  Princeton University Press, 1965
3. MacCormack, S., Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, University of California Press, 1981
4. Curran, John R., Pagan city and Christian capital : Rome in the fourth century ,Oxford University Press, 2000
5. Elsner, J., Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity, Clarendon Press, 1994
6. Pierce, P., “The Arch of Constantine: Propaganda and Ideology in Late Roman Art, Art History 12 (1989): 387-418
7. Wilson, R. J. A., Piazza Armerina, University of Texas Press, 1983
8. Holloway, R., Constantine and Rome, Yale University Press, 2004
9. Krautheimer, R., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, Penguin, 1975