How did Die Engravers and Sculptors know how the Emperors etc. looked like?

[peterpil19]

Greetings,

Does anyone know how  the sculptors and die engravers knew what the various emperors, empresses and rulers looked like? Are there any published theories on this?

Were "control" sculptures or paintings made from the source (the person) and then distributed to different territories and mints for artisans to use as references?
There appears to be a reasonable level of consistency so there must have been lots of reference material floating around?

This has probably been covered here on FORVM before but I do not know where to look. My searching on the internet has not yielded any useful information.

Peter

[Molinari]

Good question. I don't have an answer, but I would think drawings or paintings rather than sculptures. Maybe some distant mints would just copy an extant coin.

[ctgcoins]

“Notes on the Transmission of Imperial Images in Late Antiquity.” Studia romana in honorem Petri Krarup septuagenarii.  (1976) : 122- 131.
A pdf can be found at:
http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/articles/

[ctgcoins]

Author is Patrick Bruun

[peterpil19]

Interesting read, thank you for sharing. It also covers the role of portraits being circulated generally.

I have extracted a few relevant parts from the text below:

• The closer to the model, to the emperor himself, the die-cutter worked, the greater the chance that the coin portrait corresponds to the model.

• The privileges of having his portraits and his titles circulated on the coins must have been an asset of fundamental importance to imperial propaganda.

• We have some literary evidence of the procedure adopted for the purpose of communicating imperial portraits all over the empire...Lactantius tells us that Constantine, having been hailed his father's successor on July 25, 306 in Eboracum, after a few days sent his laureate portrait to the senior augustus Galerius, who hesitated for a while over whether to accept it or not.

• An attentive study of the coin obverses in fact suggests that local artists had to content themselves with slight indications of the characteristics of the emperor to be depicted, such as "young", "clean-shaven", "aquiline nose". Otherwise the emperor, who was master of the mint, supplied the basic features of the portraits to be applied on the obverses.

So it seems that "portraits" were distributed.
I wonder if the portraits were paintings, or carved reliefs.

Peter

[SC]

Or both?

It is a good question.  I believe that the word used is "imagos" or "imagines" and that the definition is not clear.  I think that the general scholarly view is that it could refer to a variety of things - a full in-the-round bust, relief work, painting, etc.  For example I think that the word is also used for flag-like things like the labarum.

Roman paintings are a fascinating subject.  While frescos - paintings on plaster - have survived no paintings on cloth or canvas-like materials survive.  Yet we know they existed as they are referred to in Roman literature - in houses, mounted in wagons during parades and triumphs, on the sides of buildings for special occasions.  Because they no longer exist the subject is often neglected.

It would certainly seem to be easier and much much quicker to make paintings or drawings and send them in a state courier's pouch than to carve busts out of marble and ship them to different mints.

SC

[peterpil19]

l think that would be a logical conclusion, that "imagines" would include different "media" types.

Sculptures offer the advantage of a 3 dimensional representation of an emperor however paintings would allow for colour in addition to speed of execution.  I am not certain what practice of painting sculptures existed if at all (other than painting the eyes as I recall reading somewhere), so paintings could give additional information which in turn could assist die engravers and other artisans.

What I would give to see a contemporary painting of an emperor taken directly from the source!

Peter