Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

Comments

Re: Iconography

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yep, this is why I said "one single thread," because I was hesitating to post this, because there are tons of other threads, like all of the beards that exist for *other* reasons. Greek philosophers and those who followed in their tradition were so big on beards that forcing them to shave was a means of humiliation, and you get philosophers saying they would commit suicide rather than lose their beard! (I forget if anyone actually did--Selena may remember what the source for this is, I'm going from memory.)

By the way, one thing I also meant to add is that in the later empire period, you also start to get the emperors depicted bigger than surrounding figures, as realism becomes less important than "obey us."

(I haven't even talked about Hellenistic trends, but because of the rise of monarchs ruling pieces of Alexander's empire, you get some of the same tendencies, as well as other interesting innovations.)

Re: Iconography

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, haha, here I go again forgetting to spell things out and writing in shorthand, in this because because I had to memorize them for an exam: cahn, you can't see clearly in that picture of the tetrarchs, but of the two pairs of tetrarchs, one in each pair has a beard and one doesn't, and otherwise they look exactly the same (presumably to signal unity of purpose). This has led some scholars to conclude that the beard signals the senior emperor, the Augustus, and thus that each Augustus is depicted with his respective Caesar. (And thus that Diocletian and Maximian are not hugging each other, alas for my OTP. :P)

But since we don't have the artist's notes on what exactly was intended, we're extrapolating, and...you know the drill here, other scholars have other ideas about what's being depicted here (maybe the Augusti are hugging each other and the Caesars are hugging each other!), and it may not even be the Tetrarchs.

There's also a bust of Diocletian here in Massachusetts! Only it's a bust of "Diocletian (?)" because no one is sure if it was really meant to depict him. And yes, this is why I like the 18th century better.

Side note, I find Roman emperor and empress busts really fascinating and had to stop myself from launching into a full-out description of the evolution of fashions over the history of the empire, but I'll give you a couple of fun tidbits:

1. Women's wigs could be quite entertaining, see also the dome-shaped beehive, the peaked beehive and the helmet styles (all of which involve wigs).

2. There was a brief period, during the reign of Caracalla, where people tend to be depicted frowning, both Caracalla himself and other people. I once turned a corner in a museum (Vienna, I think), was confronted with a frowning bust, and based on that and some stylistic details that told me it probably wasn't Roman Republic, I went, "Reign of Caracalla!" Checked the card on the wall, and laughed hysterically when I was right. Because one time, when I was showing some coworkers around the Getty Villa and explaining Roman busts to them, we joked that everyone was so stressed during Caracalla's reign that their faces froze like that.

3. Marcus Aurelius would like honorary mention for his Greek philosopher style beard.

Basically, if you don't know the evolution of fashions of Roman busts, you walk into a museum and you see like 40 busts that all look the same and have names you don't recognize, and it can get tedious quickly. Once you memorize the cues, you can start going, "Looks stressed, might be Caracalla or one of his subjects!" "Has a fleshy neck, might be the Munich type of Nero!" "Eyes rolled up, might be a Christian in the later period looking toward heaven!" "The peaked beehive was only briefly in fashion*, so I know exactly when this must be from!" And then you can start having a whole lot of fun in museums, highly recommended. :)

* For women who could afford it, obvs. Meaning you had to be able to buy false hair (usually meaning someone else's hair, not your own--blonde German hair was fashionable for a while), have a maid/slave to dress your hair, and have lots of leisure time for the hairdressing. It was a status symbol.