CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Bodnaruk, Mariana |
|---|---|
| Title | The Politics of Memory and Visual Politics: Comparing the Self-representation of Constantine and Augustus |
| Summary | My analysis of Constantine’s self-representation is based on a prominent yet also familiar triad of visual media: the imperial building program and public ceremonies, the iconography of honorific statuary, and numismatic evidence. However, in contrast to previous studies, I propose that the proper context to understand ideological shifts of the Constantinian period is Augustan Rome and the symbolic legacy of the founder of the empire appropriated by Constantine, focusing on material as well as literary sources. While it is acknowledged that the Constantinian innovative image has been seen to represent the end of the military tradition of short-haired and short-bearded imperial likeness which culminated in the anonymous and effectively interchangeable portraits of Tetrarchs, it is a much under-emphasized fact that the traditional elite did not embrace Constantinian innovatory look. Although this radically new image conceived for Constantine, that of a beardless Augustus-like figure, has been recognized and held up as an important turning point in late Roman art, its contemporaneous textual parallels that demonstrate the increasing desire for typological comparisons between Constantine and Augustus have been entirely neglected by art historians. My thesis offers a new interpretation of Constantine’s memory and visual politics examining his literary and iconographic typological assimilation to an Augustan image and youthful Apollonian portraiture and argues that Constantine fully inherited ideological capital from the empire of Augustus, whose memories were harnessed as weapons in new political realities. |
| Supervisor | Menze, Volker; Riedl, Matthias |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/bodnaruk_mariana.pdf |
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