Ok, so the title of the module we’re in now, of course, helps to answer the question we were hinting at at the end of our last one, right, but just to recap:
We have begun this second unit of the course by transitioning into Roman art, a topic we will continue to examine here in Module 7 – that is, we will still be considering art being made in the time and place of the Roman Empire, but the focus of this work will now be dramatically different. Rather than art dedicated to the dominant, imperial culture of Rome, or to its official pagan religion – the worship of the Roman and earlier Greek pantheons – the work explored in this module relates to the visual culture of what were seen at the time as some newer religious cults, which began springing up and gaining speed in the eastern territories of the empire, places that we now refer to geographically as the Middle East.
These will be images and objects still made in the Roman territories, and likely by the same artisans who were creating images for worship in the official pagan religion. So we will often see that, at least to begin with, there was a great overlap, in style and iconography, between the art that was made for the official religion, and that of some of these new ones. But we’ll find that these styles and motifs will now be used to visualize an entirely new religious tradition.
Let’s see how this works.
