Editor's Note
If power had a face, what would it look like? The personification of power in historical memory is not uncommon. In China, where the monarchy has a long history, the mode of power exercise has been typed according to different monarchs, and in the imagination of Chinese, Huan Ling is synonymous with tyranny, and Tang Zong and Song Zu represent the rule of doing.
In the Western world, where the tradition of statue art and realistic painting is deep, the symbol of power is not only widely recognized through personification, but also visualized through artistic creation, and circulated as a picture in the political field and cultural market. At the center of this system of power images is the image of the ancient Roman emperor.
In her new book Tweet Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern, Mary Beard, a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge, describes how the image of Western elites and celebrities over the past two thousand years was born out of the Roman emperor, by explaining more than 240 high-definition full-color illustrations and combing the genealogy of the image production of Roman emperors from the ancient Roman period to the 20th century. It reveals the profound influence of the image of the Roman rulers in Western history on the artistic expression of power.
Roman emperors everywhere
In today's Western world, Roman emperors are still ubiquitous. Although nearly two thousand years have passed since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, at least in the West, almost everyone can recognize the name julius Caesar or Nero, or even what he looks like.
The faces of Roman emperors gaze not only at people from museum shelves or gallery walls, they also appear in movies, advertisements and newspaper cartoons. It takes little for a satirical cartoonist to turn a modern politician into a "Nero who plays the harp while Rome burns", adding only a laurel garland, a toga robe, a lira and some background flames, as Chris Riddell did to then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009.
(Comics) By Gordon Brown, Chris Riddell (2009)
The influence of the Roman emperors extended far beyond libraries or lecture rooms. Over the past five hundred years or so, these emperors and their wives, mothers and children have been reproduced countless times in paintings and tapestries, silverware and ceramics, marble and bronze, and even in modern media. Before the age of mass machine production, their images appeared more frequently in Western art than any other figure, except for Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and a section of the saints. Caligula and Claudius have evoked far more resonance in the history of the Western world than Charlemagne, Charles V, or Henry VIII.
Stories or legends about Roman emperors continue into the imagination of modern Western society: the sensational antics of Emperor Tiberius in the pool of Capri, Nero's carnal desire for his mother, Domi's skillful use of the tip of his pen to torture flies, or the story of Elaga barus generously welcoming guests with rose petals but suffocating his guests to death, which are still used today to paint the picture of Roman times.
Genealogy of roman emperor image production
For Mary Beard, a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge, everything about the ancient Roman emperors has been a staple of her work. The rhetoric of the Roman emperors, the legal verdicts, the basis of power, the rules of succession, and even their jokes were all the subjects of Professor Beard's research. She taught her students to study carefully the descriptions of Roman emperors by her contemporaries in Rome, and then pointed out from the rigor of the search for historical facts that these stories that have survived to this day are not necessarily true.
In her new book, Tweet Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern, Professor Beard attempts to explore the supreme rulers of the Roman Empire from the perspective of historical memory rather than historical facts, temporarily shifting his gaze away from the actual appearance of the Roman Emperor's rule and shifting the focus to the image of the Roman Emperor around people. She began to explore another basic set of questions:
Why did these re-productions of imperial figures arise, and why did artists since the Renaissance depict political figures from more than a thousand years ago in such a large number and variety of ways? Why would customers choose to buy these artistic reproductions, whether luxurious sculptures or cheap veneers and prints? Many Roman emperors were known for their evil rather than heroism, and what does the faces of these long-dead dictators mean to modern audiences?
Nero's head on a matchbox.
The laurel crown of matches evokes memories of the fires in the city of Rome.
Professor Beard will reconstruct the genealogy of the forgotten 16th-century images of the Roman Emperors based on extant images—frescoes, sculptures, prints, silverware, porcelain, and images of Caesar in various prints—and other obscure clues, which were so widely known that they defined the universal imagination of emperors across Europe. She will show why these images of Roman emperors – although they may be dictators and tyrants – still play a pivotal role in the history of art and culture.
The book Twelve Caesars revolves around Roman emperors, especially the original "Twelve Caesars": from Julius Caesar (assassinated in 44 BC) to Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero to Domitian, who tortured flies (assassinated in 96 AD).
But many modern and contemporary artists shared with the Roman emperors the focus of the author's depiction. These include well-known masters of the Western tradition, such as Andrea Mantegna, Titian or Alma-Tadema, as well as generations of unknown weavers, carpenters, silversmiths, printers, and potters who created the most influential portraits of Roman emperors. This book will delve into the artists' creative careers and explore what message they try to convey in their works with images of Roman emperors.
In addition to the objects and subjects of artistic creation, consumers of artistic products also played an important role in the genealogy of the transmission of the image of the Roman emperor. Numerous figures who had no connection with artistic production, from cleaners to courtiers, were impressed, angry, bored, or confused by the images of Roman emperors they saw. That is, The Twelve Caesars is concerned not only with the emperors themselves or the artists who reproduce them, but also with countless people who gaze at these images of emperors: for them, what kind of visual experience do the faces of these rulers bring?
Augustus' head on a chocolate coin
All the images and artworks bearing the faces of roman emperors will be the research materials of Tweete Caesars. In this book, readers will encounter Roman emperors in unexpected places – chocolate, sixteenth-century wallpaper, eighteenth-century glitzy wax figures... The book will deal with statues whose age is still controversial to this day, and no one can be sure whether they were created during the Roman period or a modern patchwork, a forgery, or a creative renaissance reproduction of the traditions of the Roman Empire. This book will explore why these images of emperors have been repeatedly identified or consistently confused over the centuries: statues of Caligula have been re-carved as images of Claudius, Vespasian has been confused with his son Titus, and some female figures in Roman history have been interpreted as male.
Discursive strategies for self-expression in power relations
Images of Roman emperors constantly arouse strong feelings. For the monarchs of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, who scrambled to claim to be the successors of the Roman emperors, it was a way of talking about power from a safe distance: the eyes of the subjects were diverted from the tyranny of the great-grandfather of the monarchs 100 years ago, and the legitimacy of rule was felt in the plausible connection between the power in front of them and the Roman emperor. By the 20th century, Mussolini had used the stick as a symbol of fascism, and had moved the statue of Julius Caesar to the parliament, and when he stood in front of Caesar and gave a speech, his voice seemed to have the magic of the ancient Roman emperors.
Mussolini in the Italian Parliament in 1936
In conversations between the past and the present, the faces of emperors and anecdotes appear, putting a veil of legitimacy on the power of dynasties or modern dictators. The image of the Roman emperor provided a standard template for the representation of kings, nobles, and the rich—at least until the 19th century, sculptures of nobles, politicians, philosophers, soldiers, and writers were dressed in toga robes or Roman armor. To this day, for those dignitaries who are not afraid of controversy, collecting a set of busts of Roman emperors in their homes is still an effective means of demonstrating power and ambition.
Yet for those who have always had a belief in power, Caesar's face is a source of curse or controversy. In 1845, U.S. President Jackson righteously and sternly refused to be buried in a coffin believed to have been the coffin of Alexander Severus after death: "I cannot agree that my flesh is placed in a container for the emperor or the king, and my republican feelings and principles will never allow me to do so." In 1934, Roosevelt Jr., who celebrated his 52nd birthday, defied criticism of his "dictatorship" and held a toga robe party at the White House, where he sat in the center with a laurel crown on his head, as if mocking public opinion. The imprint of the Roman rulers was seen as an ominous symbol by republican tradition and denounced as a symbol of corruption.
Roosevelt Jr. 1934 Toga's Robe Party
The artistic creations that depict the actions of the Roman tyrants teach the viewer in the most vivid way what tyranny means. Professor Beard often said that if a Roman emperor were to be used as an analogy to today's politician, it would be most appropriate for Elaga Barus, who suffocated his guests with rose petals— "There is no security under tyranny, and the generosity of rulers can be fatal." And when readers see the painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), they can feel the nature of power in an immersive way.
At the feast of rose petals of Elaga Barus, his guests were suffocated to death
The Roses of Heliogabalus(1888), Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Before his death, Nero shouted "This world will lose a great artist". In 1974, painter Anselm Kiefer used the image of Nero as emperor and artist to reflect on the atrocities of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe. In the painting, titled Nero Paints, a palette hangs high above the devastated earth, and the brush sprays with flames, like messengers of destruction. Exploring the modern reproduction of images of Roman emperors will also provide a new perspective for thinking about the relationship between art and power, tyranny, and the artist's responsibility as a participant or spectator of tyranny.
Nero Paints(1974), Anselm Kiefer
In the current Western world, the "statue war" is in full swing. Statues of colonialists, slave owners, and invaders, once regarded by their contemporaries as great men, were everywhere, and there was much debate about whether these symbols of power's evils should be overthrown.
And like the statues of these modern figures, although the recurring images of Roman rulers throughout history have had different meanings for modern rulers, subjects, artists, and countless nameless consumers, these imperial figures provide a focal point for the debate over power. Perhaps, as long as the phenomenon of politics and power is eternal, the artistic reproduction of the face of power will never stop, and the image of the Roman emperor plays a role in providing the language and resources for self-expression for all parties to power relations, at least in the Western context.
Binding and inner page appreciation