 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
Preview first page |
Document Details : Title: Looking in the Wrong Direction Subtitle: The Search for Late Antique Stylistic Forerunners in Palmyrene Art Author(s): RAJA, Rubina Journal: Eastern Christian Art Volume: 14 Date: 2025 Pages: 37-52 DOI: 10.2143/ECA.14.0.3295405 Abstract : Since 2012, the Palmyra Portrait Project at Aarhus University has collected a corpus that now holds almost 4,000 funerary portraits stemming from the oasis city Palmyra in the Syrian Desert. These locally produced limestone portraits, loculus portraits, and banqueting reliefs, dating between the first and later third centuries CE, were set up in monumental family graves. Previous scholarship has linked Palmyrene art to that of Late Antiquity, and even characterised it as a precursor of Late Antique art. It is argued here that Palmyrene art does not point to the art of Late Antiquity, and that we cannot look for precursors, even distant ones, in the rich corpus of art from this oasis city. Rather, the art of Palmyra should be seen as intimately bound up with local funerary, honorary, and religious contexts, and as reflecting the use of a range of choices shaped by specific social spheres that were themselves deeply embedded in local traditions and contexts over the almost three hundred years in which we can trace the production of Palmyrene art. |
|
