Ancient Sculptural Copies in Miniature (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition)

Copying engaged Roman sculptors throughout the centuries-long practice of their craft. "Ancient Sculptural Copies in Miniature" investigates a little-acknowledged product of the copyist workshop, the statuette copy. Following a general discussion of the history and function of the miniature, the text devotes separate chapters to several famous statuary types that serve as paradigms of the copyist's art. These in-depth studies determine the techniques, formal values, and meanings of the miniature while providing methodological models for the understanding of any copy. Their results challenge many of the ideas that have directed modern interpretations of ancient copying. At the same time, they shed light on the cultural processes of Hellenization that transformed Roman society beginning in the last centuries BC and shaped Rome's artistic legacy to the West.