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Finding Ovid through Raphael in the Schools of the Tombs

Thomas, Ben D. H. (2003) Finding Ovid through Raphael in the Schools of the Tombs. Art on the Line, 1 (2). pp. 1-11. ISSN 1478-6818. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:13082)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/artontheline/journal_2003...

Abstract

In 1674 a tomb decorated with murals was discovered on the Via Flaminia in Rome, which on the basis of inscriptions was wrongly identified as Ovid’s tomb. Pietro Santi Bartoli, an ardent frequenter of the ‘Schools of the Tombs’, preserved the mural designs in prints published in 1680 as Le pitture antiche del sepolcro de’ Nasoni. These prints form part of Bartoli’s dual project to record the vestiges of Roman art and to recover the parergonal elements of Raphael’s works; a dialogue between ancient and modern in which differences of historical context and artistic accomplishment were effaced by the bland reproductive style of the etchings. Bartoli’s prints of the tomb paintings were accompanied by a remarkable iconographical exegesis by Giovanni Pietro Bellori, in which he identified Ovid’s portrait and elucidated the pictorial cycle’s concern with the soul’s journey after death. The similarities with Bellori’s readings of picture cycles by Raphael, Annibale Carracci and Nicolas Poussin are discussed here, together with the theme of the tomb in his writings

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled keywords: Raphael, Nicolas Poussin, Ovid, Giovan Pietro Bellori, Pietro Santi Bartoli, mural painting, tomb painting, Schools of the Tombs.
Subjects: N Visual Arts
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Arts
Depositing User: Kevin Goddard
Date Deposited: 15 Oct 2008 08:12 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:50 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/13082 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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