{"id":1084,"date":"2016-11-22T13:28:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T11:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/die-goldbueste-des-septimius-severus\/"},"modified":"2024-09-05T10:41:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T08:41:16","slug":"die-goldbueste-des-septimius-severus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/die-goldbueste-des-septimius-severus\/","title":{"rendered":"Die Goldb\u00fcste des Septimius Severus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mit Beitr\u00e4gen von Alessandra Giumlia-Mair und Fotografien von Thanos Kartsoglou. With English summary. R\u00e9sum\u00e9 fran\u00e7ais.<\/em><\/p>\n

Die intakt erhaltene Goldb\u00fcste des Kaisers Septimius Severus aus Nordgriechenland ist ein ausserordentliches Zeugnis der r\u00f6mischen kaiserlichen Portr\u00e4tkunst. Sie geh\u00f6rt zu einer Gruppe von nicht mehr als sechs Kaiserbildnissen aus Gold, die wir aus der Antike kennen.<\/p>\n

Zusammen mit der ber\u00fchmten Goldb\u00fcste des Kaisers Marc Aurel von Avenches ist sie wohl die bedeutendste Vertreterin einer Gattung, die in der Antike sehr viel h\u00e4ufiger gewesen sein muss und gewissermassen als mobiler Stellvertreter des Kaisers im Kult, in der Armee und bei \u00f6ffentlichen Amtshandlungen fungieren konnte.<\/p>\n

Die B\u00fcste wurde vor \u00fcber 50 Jahren durch Zufall entdeckt. Umso erstaunlicher ist es, dass sie bis heute so gut wie unpubliziert ist. Dass es Frau Dr. de Pury-Gysel gelungen ist, von der griechischen Antikenbeh\u00f6rde die Erlaubnis zu erwirken, die Goldb\u00fcste im Original studieren und monographisch ver\u00f6ffentlichen zu d\u00fcrfen, kann ihr nicht hoch genug angerechnet werden, zeugt aber gleichzeitig von ihrem durch eine jahrelange Forschungst\u00e4tigkeit erworbenen wissenschaftlichen Renommee.<\/p>\n

In ihrer Studie n\u00e4hert sich Anne de Pury-Gysel der Goldb\u00fcste aus unterschiedlicher Richtung an. Neben den prim\u00e4ren Aspekten der Fund- und Forschungsgeschichte, dem historischen Kontext, der Herstellungstechnik und der stilistischen Einordnung steht die Frage nach der Bedeutung und Funktion der Kaiserbildnisse, die in dieser umfassenden Form bisher noch nie behandelt wurde.<\/p>\n

Indem sie nicht nur das Einzelwerk aus Nordgriechenland, sondern die Gattung der bislang bekannten dreizehn Gold- und Silberb\u00fcsten als Ganzes in den Fokus nimmt, schafft die Autorin mit ihrer Studie ein Referenzwerk, das in der Forschung zweifelsohne eine breite Rezeption finden wird.<\/p>\n

Prof. Dr. Martin Guggisberg, Leiter Fachbereich Klassische Arch\u00e4ologie, Universit\u00e4t Basel<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In June 1965, a gold bust-length portrait of the emperor Septimius Severus in armor came to light by chance at the site of the Roman town of Plotinopolis in Thrace, a former Greek settlement rededicated by Trajan in honor of his wife, Plotina. The bust, fashioned by hammering and engraving 23-karat sheet gold, weighs 980g (3 Roman pounds) and is 25cm high. The portrait is truly a masterpiece of the metalworker\u2019s art and is, in my judgment, the finest extant image of a Roman emperor in precious metal. It is regrettable that, more than a half-century after the discovery of this Severan bust housed in the small regional archaeological museum in Komotini, Greece, it is still virtually unknown. But the Plotinopolis portrait has now received the meticulously documented and lavishly illustrated monograph it has long deserved, and for that we must be grateful to the authors and the publisher.<\/span><\/p>\n

The handsome volume, with superb photos of the Severan bust by Thanos Kartsoglou, opens with two chapters on the provenance, the (scant) scholarship to date, and a detailed description of the gold portrait by the primary author, Anne de Pury-Gysell. The findspot unfortunately does not provide any information about the bust\u2019s original location, how it was displayed, or its function. An appendix to the second chapter by Alessandra Giumlia-Mair is a technical analysis (in English) of the gold alloy and the bust\u2019s method of manufacture. Giumlia-Mair believes that the metal for the portrait was obtained by melting imperial gold coins circulating in Thrace. The remnants of a bronze brace on the back of the hollow bust suggests that it was attached to a bracket and that the portrait may have been carried on a pole in a procession. Literary sources and representations in art indicate that precious-metal portraits such as the Plotinopolis bust were portable proxies for the emperor in diverse civic, military, and religious contexts. The date of the portrait is probably early in the reign of Septimius Severus, that is, the very end of the second century, because it conforms to what both Anna Marguerite McCann and Dirk Soechting have identified as the first portrait type of the emperor.1<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The quality and rarity of the Plotinopolis bust on their own justify a monographic publication, but Pury-Gysell has used the Severan portrait as the springboard for a very valuable general discussion of Roman imperial portraits in gold and silver, with chapters on gold as a symbol of power, the ancient texts mentioning gold images of emperors, and the role of portrait busts in the imperial cult and as key elements of military standards. Indeed, all but one of the extant portraits of an emperor in either gold or silver were found in the provinces, the exception being the silver bust of Galba from Herculaneum, which is also the earliest example\u2014all the more remarkable because of the emperor\u2019s short-lived (seven-month) reign ending in assassination and decapitation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part II of the Librum monograph is a catalogue of every known Roman imperial portrait in gold or silver with multiple color photos of each piece. These include well-known images, such as the gold bust of Marcus Aurelius from Avenches in Switzerland and the silver bust of Lucius Verus from Marengo in Piedmont at an Alpine crossing (both, like the Galba and Septimius Severus busts, portraying the emperor in cuirass), as well as many little-known examples, numbering 13 in all. Most date from the Late Empire and the identifications of several are very tenuous. Almost all are singular finds or without any provenance, but the Marengo bust was part of a large silver treasure uncovered in 1928\u2014the highlight of the archaeological collection of Turin\u2019s Museo di Antichit\u00e0. Of those precious-metal portraits that consist of the head alone (as opposed to a bust) the most interesting has been known since at least 1010. This is the head of the gold-and-bejeweled Romanesque reliquary of Sainte Foye (Saint Faith) at Conques, France, here identified as most likely a portrait of Valentinian I, although the head has also been considered a reused Roman parade helmet with a generic face and a portrait of Charlemagne\u2014all curious choices for the image of a girl-martyr that underscore the rarity of ancient precious-metal spolia even a thousand years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

In sum,\u00a0Die Goldb\u00fcste des Septimius Severus<\/em>\u00a0is a most welcome publication that should inspire further studies of the phenomenon of depicting emperors in gold or silver (no comparable portraits of empresses survive, which may be an additional explanation for the reuse of a male head for the Sainte Foye reliquary). Anne de Pury-Gysel\u2019s new book merits a place in every research library on Roman portraiture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018.09.35\/Reviewed by\u00a0Fred S. Kleiner, Boston University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
 <\/p>\n

Weitere Rezensionen:<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

METALL_6_2018<\/a><\/p>\n

Galvanotechnik_12_2017<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mit Beitr\u00e4gen von Alessandra Giumlia-Mair und Fotografien von Thanos Kartsoglou. With English summary. R\u00e9sum\u00e9 fran\u00e7ais. Die intakt erhaltene Goldb\u00fcste des Kaisers Septimius Severus aus Nordgriechenland ist ein ausserordentliches Zeugnis der r\u00f6mischen kaiserlichen Portr\u00e4tkunst. Sie geh\u00f6rt zu einer Gruppe von nicht mehr als sechs Kaiserbildnissen aus Gold, die wir aus der Antike kennen. Zusammen mit der […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,103,51],"tags":[277,278,279,280,281,282,283,284,285,286,287,288,289,290,291,292,293,294],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-librum-open-en","category-monograph","category-publications-en","tag-armee-en","tag-bildnis-en","tag-didymoteichon-en","tag-gold-en","tag-goldbueste-en","tag-goldbuesteb-en","tag-griechenland-en","tag-kaiser-en","tag-kaiserbildnis-en","tag-kaiserkult-en","tag-plotinopolis-en","tag-roemer-en","tag-roemisch-en","tag-septimius-en","tag-severus-en","tag-silberbuesten-en","tag-standarten-en","tag-thrakien-en"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"Gold- und Silberb\u00fcsten r\u00f6mischer Kaiser","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6631,"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions\/6631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librum-publishers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}