"Late Antiquity": A Protean Term

Sammendrag

Roman art under the Empire manifested a protean nature, varying greatly in its visible essentials from time to time, and from place to place. That variation made the definition of its holistic character difficult for art historians familiar with more coherent periods of artistic expression and more consistent modes of reception. Late Antique art exhibited great variation, especially it its latest phases, when an irregular alienation from the traditional Greco-Roman norms of artistic production became progressively more pronounced. If the term “Late Antique Art” is to be critically effective as a stylistic designator with usefulness for the general historians of the period, attention must be paid to the uneven rates of change in form and content in the exploitation of its imagery. These intraprendent elements seem to have different trajectories: Content changed substantially in the service of an increasingly Christianized audience, less committed to the Greco-Roman tradition and its model imagery. Formal patterns were also under great pressure for change, driven by the needs of a spectating audience drawn to the focalizing of powerful figures. The repertory of such images became less dependant on a material referent in favor of optical abstractions which produced a distancing effect, an imagery existing at an uncertain remove in an ill-determined space, visible but beyond reach. Elements of the elite self-consciously clung to some reflexive reiteration of the Greco-Roman tradition as a personal symbol of cultural identity; in doing so they contributed to the later foundation of European artistic culture.