The Nude Portrait under the Empire

The aim of this chapter is to determine the function and meaning of the portrait in heroic costume under the empire. Since the extant material for this period is so abundant, the kind of comprehensive treatment attempted in the previous chapter is not possible. Instead a different method is followed: in the first part of the chapter a broad historical survey is offered of the various kinds of nude portrait found in the imperial period, making use of select examples to represent (as far as is possible) the full extent and variety of the surviving evidence. There follows in the second part a brief account of the general range of costumes employed for Roman portraits that reconstructs the symbolic significance of each costume for Roman self-representation.

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