Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture (review)

This handsomely produced volume represents the fruit of many years of study and of close personal inspection of Roman imperial portraits sculpted during a period of over 250 years, from Caligula to Constantine. Eric Varner's full-scale study, based on his 1993 Yale Ph.D. dissertation, follows from his edited volume From Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture (Atlanta 2000), the catalogue of an exhibition of portraits first at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University and then at the Yale University Art Gallery. The new book offers a full analysis of the subject of imperial portraits and their treatment after the disgrace of the person they represented. Coins and glyptic images also receive extensive discussion. Inscriptions are cited with some frequency. Strategies examined include destruction, mutilation, the throwing of images into wells and rivers, and most notably recarving to represent another, usually imperial, person. At the same time, there is also evidence that some images continued to be displayed. Varner's volume includes over two hundred fine photographs, including shots from a variety of angles, all reproduced on high-quality art paper. There is also a full bibliography, as well as indices. The catalogue of mutilated and altered portraits from the first to the fourth century C.E. includes a detailed entry for each item (225–88). Unfortunately, proofreading is not up to the high standard set by the rest of the production.

The volume comprises ten chapters. The introduction looks briefly at the meaning of disgrace in iconography and then offers a succinct survey of political disgrace and sanctions against memory in the Near East, pharaonic Egypt, Greece, Sicily, Egypt under the Ptolemies, and the Roman Republic, concluding with the treatment of Mark Antony and Cleopatra by Octavian after the Battle of Actium. Chapters then proceed in a roughly chronological order. Caligula comes first, and this chapter includes consideration of his wife Milonia Caesonia and his sister Julia Drusilla. Chapter 3 discusses Nero and his second wife Poppaea Sabina. In chapter 4 other Julio-Claudians are enumerated, most of them women, starting with Julia, the daughter of Augustus, and ending with Ptolemy of Mauretania. Chapter 5 considers the use and abuse of images in the year 69 C.E. (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius). Chapter 6 is devoted to Domitian, the only individual to receive a separate chapter of his own, a fact that attests to his importance in any history of memory sanctions. Chapter 7 treats Commodus, Lucilla, Crispina, and Annia Fundania Faustina. Chapter 8 presents the evidence for the Severans, both male and female. Chapter 9 discusses the later third century C.E., from 235 to 285. Chapter 10 treats the early fourth century, when images of his rivals and of various relatives were destroyed and reworked on the orders of Constantine. Each chapter includes a brief historical outline of the life and disgrace of the imperial individuals discussed. It is a pity that there is no concluding chapter to pull together thoughts and observations that arise from this mass of material.

The particular strength of this study is its technical virtuosity and its detailed consideration of the effects of disgrace, and especially of recarving, on Roman imperial iconography. It is striking to see, for example, that both veristic and classicizing portraits of Claudius are reworkings of his predecessor Gaius. In discussing the emergence of certain attributes and styles of imperial iconography, Varner shows that it is essential to consider whether or not the portraits under discussion were recarved. The question of audience perception of the process of reworking is also addressed. Of special interest are the questions raised about how sculptors' workshops operated, as they frequently stored and reused portraits of disgraced individuals, both male and female, some of which were not reworked until decades or even centuries after their removal into storage. At the same time, this book does retain a format reminiscent...