Eve D’ambra
Biographic Data
| ID | 2892462 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eve D’ambra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eve |
| FAMILY NAME | D’ambra |
| SIGNATURE | D’AMBRA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vassar College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Temple of the Deified Matidia among the porticoes of the Campus Martius
The essay focuses on a Hadrianic temple in the Campus Martius in Rome that commemorated the emperor’s mother-in-law and offered urban amenities in the form of porticoes and gardens. It then looks to related structures in Athens and Italica, and returns to Rome for a discussion of the Saepta Julia, a well-known portico next to Matidia’s temple often mentioned by poets for its social scene
Style from Below in the Roman Empire
The portrait bust of a Roman matron in the J. Paul Getty Museum (79.AA.118) belongs to a type of sculptural portraiture whose features are distinguished from those of the leading imperial women of Rome. Dating to the first half of the second century CE, this group of portraits of Roman matrons, mostly unidentified women of the middle-lower social ranks, displays striking depictions of mature faces and elaborate hairstyles. Close study of the coif…
Ideal Beauty and Adornment
The article focuses on a Roman portrait of a young woman in the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the early second century C.E. The marble head, though striking for its beauty and high quality of craftsmanship, cannot be identified. It is also a fragment from a statue without an archaeological context or findspot. How do we approach a sculpture about which so much cannot be known? A visual analysis of related portraits, along with a discussion of t…
Elite and mass appeal of Roman imperial female portraiture
Sabina's portraiture has been characterized by her mature type that evokes the ideal adornment of Hellenic goddesses. Yet her earlier heads show experimentation with coiffures also depicted on private portraits. One portrait head, in particular, represents Sabina with a hybrid coiffure, combining elements of a period style with those connoting Venus. The process of development of portrait types, and their relationship to private portraits may be …
Domus Aurea
Palatine
Children in the Hellenistic World
Mode and Model in the Flavian Female Portrait
Portraits of the Flavian imperial women, Julia Titi and Domitia Longina, bear a new coiffure that sets them off from portraits of Julio-Claudian women. The coiffure, with its high brim of curls, or toupet, is identified with the last generation of Flavian women, although it outlasted them and continued to be represented in the early second century C.E. Furthermore, the toupet adorns many private portraits that have been dated to after 81 C.E. The…
Child’s Play
This paper focuses on the representation of Roman girls in the visual arts of antiquity (portrait sculpture, reliefs on funerary altars, and the painted mummy portraits of Roman Egypt). Most of the portraits are funerary commemorations of maidens who died before their time and were memorialized in the form of portraits by their parents. Given the circumstances of childhood mortality and the timetable of funerary rituals, it is likely that the art…
The Art of Citizens, Soldiers and Freedmen in the Roman World
This collection of essays promises to make an important contribution to the field of Roman studies, particularly, by its concentration on monuments, to that of Roman art history. The current high level of interest in problems of identity, including studies of colonialism, Romanization, ethnicity, social class, gender and a host of related topics creates a vital intellectual context for the study of the art of provincials and the lower classes. Th…
Ancient Rome
Der Philosoph als Leitbild
Private Lives, Imperial Virtues
The depiction of the myth of Arachne, a woman punished for defiantly challenging Minerva to a weaving contest, is a subject without parallel for the frieze of a state monument such as Rome's Forum Transitorium, built by Domitian in the first century A.D. In this new interpretation of the frieze, Eve D'Ambra examines how art depicting mythological themes served as an instrument of social policy in the Roman Empire. She proposes that the portrayal …
Mourning and the Making of Ancestors in the Testamentum Relief
A Trajanic funerary relief, known as the Testamentum Relief, depicts the members of a Roman household (a matron, a slave, and a father represented by his portrait) in the act of mourning a young man. Comparisons with kline sculptures, funerary reliefs of craftsmen, and shield portraits suggest a social background for the family among freedmen and their descendants in Rome and Ostia in the early second century A. D. Recent scholarship on the Roman…
A Myth for a Smith
This article focuses on the relationship between the exterior and interior decoration of two second-century tombs in the Isola Sacra Necropolis outside Ostia. Terracotta reliefs depicting the occupations of the deceased were placed on the tomb facades while the chambers were adorned with mythological sarcophagi and paintings. The selection of mythological subjects is shown to complement the professions of the deceased, and evidence of a decorativ…
Mode and Model in the Flavian Female Portrait
Portraits of the Flavian imperial women, Julia Titi and Domitia Longina, bear a new coiffure that sets them off from portraits of Julio-Claudian women. The coiffure, with its high brim of curls, or toupet, is identified with the last generation of Flavian women, although it outlasted them and continued to be represented in the early second century C.E. Furthermore, the toupet adorns many private portraits that have been dated to after 81 C.E. The…
Private Lives, Imperial Virtues
The depiction of the myth of Arachne, a woman punished for defiantly challenging Minerva to a weaving contest, is a subject without parallel for the frieze of a state monument such as Rome's Forum Transitorium, built by Domitian in the first century A.D. In this new interpretation of the frieze, Eve D'Ambra examines how art depicting mythological themes served as an instrument of social policy in the Roman Empire. She proposes that the portrayal …
Mourning and the Making of Ancestors in the Testamentum Relief
A Trajanic funerary relief, known as the Testamentum Relief, depicts the members of a Roman household (a matron, a slave, and a father represented by his portrait) in the act of mourning a young man. Comparisons with kline sculptures, funerary reliefs of craftsmen, and shield portraits suggest a social background for the family among freedmen and their descendants in Rome and Ostia in the early second century A. D. Recent scholarship on the Roman…
A Myth for a Smith
This article focuses on the relationship between the exterior and interior decoration of two second-century tombs in the Isola Sacra Necropolis outside Ostia. Terracotta reliefs depicting the occupations of the deceased were placed on the tomb facades while the chambers were adorned with mythological sarcophagi and paintings. The selection of mythological subjects is shown to complement the professions of the deceased, and evidence of a decorativ…
A Myth for a Smith
This article focuses on the relationship between the exterior and interior decoration of two second-century tombs in the Isola Sacra Necropolis outside Ostia. Terracotta reliefs depicting the occupations of the deceased were placed on the tomb facades while the chambers were adorned with mythological sarcophagi and paintings. The selection of mythological subjects is shown to complement the professions of the deceased, and evidence of a decorativ…
Mourning and the Making of Ancestors in the Testamentum Relief
A Trajanic funerary relief, known as the Testamentum Relief, depicts the members of a Roman household (a matron, a slave, and a father represented by his portrait) in the act of mourning a young man. Comparisons with kline sculptures, funerary reliefs of craftsmen, and shield portraits suggest a social background for the family among freedmen and their descendants in Rome and Ostia in the early second century A. D. Recent scholarship on the Roman…
Private Lives, Imperial Virtues
The depiction of the myth of Arachne, a woman punished for defiantly challenging Minerva to a weaving contest, is a subject without parallel for the frieze of a state monument such as Rome's Forum Transitorium, built by Domitian in the first century A.D. In this new interpretation of the frieze, Eve D'Ambra examines how art depicting mythological themes served as an instrument of social policy in the Roman Empire. She proposes that the portrayal …
Der Philosoph als Leitbild
Ancient Rome
The Art of Citizens, Soldiers and Freedmen in the Roman World
This collection of essays promises to make an important contribution to the field of Roman studies, particularly, by its concentration on monuments, to that of Roman art history. The current high level of interest in problems of identity, including studies of colonialism, Romanization, ethnicity, social class, gender and a host of related topics creates a vital intellectual context for the study of the art of provincials and the lower classes. Th…
Child’s Play
This paper focuses on the representation of Roman girls in the visual arts of antiquity (portrait sculpture, reliefs on funerary altars, and the painted mummy portraits of Roman Egypt). Most of the portraits are funerary commemorations of maidens who died before their time and were memorialized in the form of portraits by their parents. Given the circumstances of childhood mortality and the timetable of funerary rituals, it is likely that the art…
Mode and Model in the Flavian Female Portrait
Portraits of the Flavian imperial women, Julia Titi and Domitia Longina, bear a new coiffure that sets them off from portraits of Julio-Claudian women. The coiffure, with its high brim of curls, or toupet, is identified with the last generation of Flavian women, although it outlasted them and continued to be represented in the early second century C.E. Furthermore, the toupet adorns many private portraits that have been dated to after 81 C.E. The…
Domus Aurea
Palatine
Children in the Hellenistic World
Elite and mass appeal of Roman imperial female portraiture
Sabina's portraiture has been characterized by her mature type that evokes the ideal adornment of Hellenic goddesses. Yet her earlier heads show experimentation with coiffures also depicted on private portraits. One portrait head, in particular, represents Sabina with a hybrid coiffure, combining elements of a period style with those connoting Venus. The process of development of portrait types, and their relationship to private portraits may be …
Ideal Beauty and Adornment
The article focuses on a Roman portrait of a young woman in the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the early second century C.E. The marble head, though striking for its beauty and high quality of craftsmanship, cannot be identified. It is also a fragment from a statue without an archaeological context or findspot. How do we approach a sculpture about which so much cannot be known? A visual analysis of related portraits, along with a discussion of t…
Style from Below in the Roman Empire
The portrait bust of a Roman matron in the J. Paul Getty Museum (79.AA.118) belongs to a type of sculptural portraiture whose features are distinguished from those of the leading imperial women of Rome. Dating to the first half of the second century CE, this group of portraits of Roman matrons, mostly unidentified women of the middle-lower social ranks, displays striking depictions of mature faces and elaborate hairstyles. Close study of the coif…
The Temple of the Deified Matidia among the porticoes of the Campus Martius
The essay focuses on a Hadrianic temple in the Campus Martius in Rome that commemorated the emperor’s mother-in-law and offered urban amenities in the form of porticoes and gardens. It then looks to related structures in Athens and Italica, and returns to Rome for a discussion of the Saepta Julia, a well-known portico next to Matidia’s temple often mentioned by poets for its social scene
Art (13 works) · History (9 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (8 works) · Art history (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History (6 works) · Portrait (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Ancient history (5 works) · Classics (5 works)