The life of Greek portraits – EIKON

EIKON concentrates on the processes of reception and appropriation of Greek portraits as well as on the media, religious and social contexts of these processes. We have to thus consider two fundamental spheres that concern the existence of Greek portraits: the performative actions of how portraits are treated (the portrait practices) and the changes in where they are placed, or in the mental context (recontextualisation). That which we call portrait practices are the direct forms of utilization, maintenance, complement, transformation etc. of the portrait statues, up until their transportation to the new exhibition context or until they are destroyed. This study includes their use in ritual acts.

The study begins at the start of the 5th century BC as this is the moment that the physiognomic individualization of portraits becomes an important phenomenon in the semantics of portraits, which changed their meaning in the political arena of the polis. The period stretching from the 4th to the 1st century BC was the apogee of the Greek portrait, in particular in the form of honorific statues that populated in large numbers public places and temples. The corpus that has been examined for the EIKON project does not extend beyond the 1st century BC and deliberately excludes the imperial era which has been extensively studied and during which the phenomenon of copying, which was well established, created a completely different context. If the emphasis is placed on emblematic places in the Greek world that offer a wealth of material that has been discovered (in particular Delos, Athens, the Panhellenic sanctuaries and Pergamon), other lesser known sites are also studied: over time the colossus of Memnon gives an example of a contextualization on the fringes of the Greek world.
The handbook on the life of portraits (Das Leben griechischer Porträts / La vie des portraits grecs / The Life of Greek Portraits) combines methodological approaches and case studies in exposing the phenomena of transmission and the portrait practices and their recontextualisations, before coming on to the stages in the portraits’ lives, from their creation to their destruction. Studies on maintenance, religion, additional inscriptions, alterations of inscriptions, repairs and transfers and recontextualisations will be developed. In the case studies, which are characteristic for the sites and for emblematic portraits, essays are planned – to give a synthetic vision (and not a systematic inventory)- for Delos, the Panhellenic sanctuaries and the Tyrannocides or Theagenes of Thasos.

The project has a wide perspective that will result in an overview of the general questions about the life of ancient portraits in their social and topographical environment. The project will give rise to publications; a handbook (see above), an essay on coronations (from the French team), a monograph on the restorations (the French team) and specific articles. The handbook will not include a catalogue but will rather be a study of the phenomenon. Remember that the notion of portraits applies to representations of people without taking into account their similarity or realistic resemblance, from the 5th to the 1st century BC.

Handbook scheduled and articles, no certificate.

The project « EIKON – Das Leben griechischer Bildnisse/ The Life of Greek Portraits » brings together a research group of Franco-German specialists in the sciences of Antiquity and in particular classical archaeology. The research subject deals with portrait statues from the fifth to the first century BC, whose omnipresence has had an important impact on the visual culture of Ancient Greece. The erection of statues, a topic which has often been addressed in research, is not the main subject of our research. For the first time, it is the “life” of the portraits from their erection to their destruction which constitutes the main subject (and not a marginal one). The “life”of the portraits is the processing of their transformations, their appropriations, their semantic evolutions and their successive re-contextualisations through ritual acts, repairs, reutilizations, new exhibitions etc. It means studying the dynamic processes of transmission, of reception and of the changes that characterise Greek portraits. They must be understood in their communication, cultural and socio-political contexts.

This project combines systematic and paradigmatic studies. Its innovatory character lies in the problematic which, for the first time, is not about circumstances and primary messages but about the concrete (re)utilization of ancient portraits and thus contributes to highlight clearly the process of their cultural and communication function. With a modern approach of the study of portraits, the project combines a contextual study and a systematic mixture of witness accounts and archaeological perspectives, epigraphs and histories that bring us to confront in a critically analytic way the very different scientific traditions from France and Germany. Two principal perspectives stand out: the actual study of the statues (the “practices of the portrait”), like coronations, repairs, honorific customs etc., and the conditions of reception that change throughout time in different reutilizations, different exhibition contexts and medium (which is “re-contexualisation”).

The results of the project will be presented in monographs on particular aspects yet unexplored in this field of studies. A complete and systematic publication will also present the results in the form of a handbook. Moreover, a complete database which will be available for future research on portraits will be created with the collaboration of the École française d’Athènes. This database will gather all witness accounts about ancient portraits in Delos, one of the most important sites for the study of Greek portraits. The results of studies in two urban sites of major importance for contextual research on portrait statues, Delos and Pergamon, will be confronted in a symposium which will be followed by a publication. In Delos and Pergamon, French and German institutions have been leading archaeological explorations for a long time. Thus, a case study about the functions and the “life” of portraits in two major urban centers of the Hellenistic world, studied by groups of researchers of German and French traditions, will be underlined.


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