Content area
Full Text
Roman Strigillated Sarcophagi: art and social history . By Huskinson Janet . 260mm. Pp xvi + 349, 80 figs, 4 tables. Oxford University Press , Oxford , 2015. isbn 9780199203246 . £75 (hbk).
Reviews
This study, dedicated as it is to a single class of Roman sarcophagi, provides a great deal more than a superficial glance at its title would immediately suggest. So many monographs written about Roman sarcophagi are basically no more than catalogues with the interest centred on slight differences of style and the location of workshops. Professor Huskinson deals with what are at first glance the least sculpturally adventurous of Roman tomb receptacles, where the reliefs are confined to the sides and centre panel separated by zones of curving grooves (called strigillation because their curving lines recall the strigil employed by bathers in antiquity) and, where they survive, the separately carved lids. In doing so she not only opens up the field for those interested in style and the minutiae of dating, but also reflects on the art of the group in the light of social history. This history (for it is no less) of strigillated sarcophagi has the same wide narrative and social sweep as that of the best art historians of our age, among them our Fellows Jas Elsner, John Onians and Verity Platt. Huskinson...