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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
I do love Mary Beard.
Right off the bat, a beautiful book (full colour pictures, creamy paper) and highly readable. The middle got a little into the weeds, talking about where this painting went and which Duke commissioned that painting, but the beginning and ending more than made up for it.
The very fact that all ancient representations of imperial characters are identified based on hunches and more often than not turn out to be "an unidentified Roman", but also the fact that it doesn't matter. Food for thought. A great read for anyone interested in the Ancient Roman world, and for anyone interested in how art and power go hand in hand.
Right off the bat, a beautiful book (full colour pictures, creamy paper) and highly readable. The middle got a little into the weeds, talking about where this painting went and which Duke commissioned that painting, but the beginning and ending more than made up for it.
The very fact that all ancient representations of imperial characters are identified based on hunches and more often than not turn out to be "an unidentified Roman", but also the fact that it doesn't matter. Food for thought. A great read for anyone interested in the Ancient Roman world, and for anyone interested in how art and power go hand in hand.
adventurous
lighthearted
reflective
informative
medium-paced
Only Mary Beard would have the audacity - and more importantly, the skills - to take a niche topic most of us would hope to use for an obscure monograph and publish it as a piece of highly readable and commercially viable nonfiction.
Excellent. This art historian thought it wasn't quite as good as SPQR - probably because SPQR was Not Work and I could feel free to be amazed and delighted. Excellent anyway and marvellously illustrated. I doubt the gluey binding is up to holding those nice, thick, colour-printed pages for long though....this definitely needed to be a hardback.
informative
slow-paced
enjoyable! an often-witty and overall quite thoughtful deep dive into an art historical niche. an inspection of a particular motif (roman emperors) throughout art history. a caveat- it IS a niche. although beard does a wonderful job of attempting a clarifying "who's who" at the beginning of the book, and thoughtfully reiterates defining features to help the reader keep the caesars in line, a familiarity with classical history and/or renaissance art history (where a lot of the motifs pop up- rather unsurprisingly) does make the reading flow easier. nothing that a slow, deliberate reading process (as is often needed for these sorts of academic romps anyhow) isn't capable of ameliorating.
the reviews on this particular book are a wonderful reminder of why i put almost no weight to goodreads reviews of books lol, it seems a great many of the negative reviews accuse beard of "neglecting historical narrative" as if that was ever the intention of the book. she does have a quite lovely *classical history* book, however this one is quite explicitly stated to be a study of artistic motifs, quite literally derived from a fine arts lecture. it's not false advertising if you simply fail to bother to read the subtitle, much less the context of the book, which is quite clear as to its content and purpose.
it was fun! i love a good microscopic art historical gander. i love a good niche.
the reviews on this particular book are a wonderful reminder of why i put almost no weight to goodreads reviews of books lol, it seems a great many of the negative reviews accuse beard of "neglecting historical narrative" as if that was ever the intention of the book. she does have a quite lovely *classical history* book, however this one is quite explicitly stated to be a study of artistic motifs, quite literally derived from a fine arts lecture. it's not false advertising if you simply fail to bother to read the subtitle, much less the context of the book, which is quite clear as to its content and purpose.
it was fun! i love a good microscopic art historical gander. i love a good niche.
I was looking for a copy of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and accidentally stumbled on a book on the history and constantly reinvention of the artistic rendering of the Roman emperors. Twelve Caesars is a fascinating read, though it often feels like an anecdotal appendix to a subject matter too widely ranging for a single text.
Though there were others after them, the first twelve dictators in Roman history are the ones who committed the most heinous crimes and attracted the most memorable rumors. Throughout modern history, these twelve have variously been lauded, condemned, and used for all sorts of propaganda purposes, both as a collective group and as individuals. But with thousands of coins and all sorts of other sculptures repudiated to be from their own lifetimes, what true information do we have about their appearances? Twelve Caesars is a case by case study of what artists and historians have gotten right and, more famously, wrong in their assertions about the historic significance on art works and texts concerning these men. Monarchs and dictators tend to love them while rebels and republicans revile everything they stood for. Christians have often identified them as both persecutors and noble characters.
This book was full on interesting stories, but I personally would have appreciated something a little more beginner in contextualization the emperors and something with a little more of a fluid through line. Audio was definitely not ideal for this one, but in paper I think it would feel more like a reference material than a read through text. Even so, all of it was fascinating.
Though there were others after them, the first twelve dictators in Roman history are the ones who committed the most heinous crimes and attracted the most memorable rumors. Throughout modern history, these twelve have variously been lauded, condemned, and used for all sorts of propaganda purposes, both as a collective group and as individuals. But with thousands of coins and all sorts of other sculptures repudiated to be from their own lifetimes, what true information do we have about their appearances? Twelve Caesars is a case by case study of what artists and historians have gotten right and, more famously, wrong in their assertions about the historic significance on art works and texts concerning these men. Monarchs and dictators tend to love them while rebels and republicans revile everything they stood for. Christians have often identified them as both persecutors and noble characters.
This book was full on interesting stories, but I personally would have appreciated something a little more beginner in contextualization the emperors and something with a little more of a fluid through line. Audio was definitely not ideal for this one, but in paper I think it would feel more like a reference material than a read through text. Even so, all of it was fascinating.