Overview

Among the greatest artistic achievements of the Roman Empire are portrait sculptures. Derived from an ancient tradition of making funerary effigies, these portraits are astonishing in their realism and expressive power, and their stern humanity speaks to us across the millennia with undiminished force and directness. Roman Portraits is a faithful reprint, in slightly reduced format, of a classic Phaidon plate book, first published in 1940. Its distinguished author, Ludwig Goldscheider, one of the founders of Phaidon Press, not only wrote the text, but made the selection of images and designed the book himself. The remarkable photographs were taken by the writer and photographer Ilse Schneider-Lengyel, who was commissioned by Phaidon in the 1930s to photograph antique and Renaissance sculpture in the great museums of Europe. This is a compendium volume to the same author's bestselling Rodin and Michelangelo. Portraits are always fascinating, and the powerful, brooding faces in this book have a compelling and haunting quality that will appeal to all students of sculpture and of human nature.

Full Product Details

9780714844367

Table of Contents

Reviews

'will become a treasured possession ... beautiful illustrations ... a delight to handle and read' Publishing News, August 2004 'astonishingly expressive - The shock of direct recognition is due not only to the power of the classical sculptors, but also to the photographer's unvarying emphasis on the faces.' The Times, November 2004

Will become a treasured possession... Beautiful illustrations... A delight to handle and read. -Publishing News Astonishingly expressive... The shock of direct recognition is due not only to the power of the classical sculptors, but also to the photographer's unvarying emphasis on the faces. -The Times

In the 1930s photographer and writer Ilse Schneider-Lengyel was commissioned to photograph a series of the antique Roman sculptures found in museums across Europe. Her beautiful black and white portraits cataloguing the Roman empire are now reproduced for the first time since they were initially published in 1940, along with the original text on the sculptures by author Ludwig Goldscheider. The portraits capture the full range of Roman social classes during antiquity, from serving girls to Emperors and fashionable ladies to priests and beggars. Lengyel's photographs repudiate the current conception of Roman sculpture as a staid and emotionless art. Her camera focuses our eye on the myriad variations of expression displayed on the faces of these people: the mournful gaze, the angry scowl and innocent smile, the playful glance. There is much more in evidence here than the stern and imperious ruler we have come to associate with Roman sculpture. Lengyel's skill as a photographer - her use of light, her telling angles and focus on unusual details - help to sharpen our appreciation of the subtleties of these works and of their profound depictions of the human condition. This large-format paperback contains one hundred and twenty full-page black and white portraits, each one a stunning reproduction of a unique work of art. A timeless book, suitable for historian, layman and art-lover alike. (Kirkus UK)

'Will become a treasured possession ... beautiful illustrations ... a delight to handle and read.' (Publishing News) 'Astonishingly expressive i'1/2 The shock of direct recognition is due not only to the power of the classical sculptors, but also to the photographeri'1/2s unvarying emphasis on the faces.' (The Times)

'Will become a treasured possession ... beautiful illustrations ... a delight to handle and read.' (Publishing News) 'Astonishingly expressive a | The shock of direct recognition is due not only to the power of the classical sculptors, but also to the photographera (TM)s unvarying emphasis on the faces.' (The Times)

Author Information

Ludwig Goldscheider (1896-1973) was a distinguished art historian and book designer, and co-founder of Phaidon Press in Vienna in 1923. Ilse Schneider-Lengyel (1903-72) was a writer and photographer who specialized in sculpture. Her photographs are reproduced in two other classic works by Goldscheider, Rodin and Michelangelo, also published by Phaidon.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available