NIKOMEDIA · New Tetrarchic Reliefs from Nikomedia: Uncovering the Colorful Life of Diocletian’s Lost Capital

New Tetrarchic Reliefs from Nikomedia: Uncovering the Colorful Life of Diocletian’s Lost Capital

The main purpose of this project is to research and produce the first scholarly publication of a major new body of Late Roman painted reliefs which were recently discovered in an imperial complex at the ancient city of Nikomedia (Izmit) in Turkey. Three essential aspects of this discovery have a great importance for the world’s cultural heritage in general, and for archaeology and art history more specifically. First, the complex is the most extensive archaeological discovery ever found in Nikomedia, a city which became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire during the reign of emperor Diocletian in the late 3rd century and it provides welcome material collateral to ancient literary sources about Nikomedia. Second, these reliefs are the only surviving examples of Roman relief sculpture with extensively preserved colour. Third, the style and subjects of the Nikomedia reliefs are precious new examples of art from the Tetrarchic period, in which symbolic and abstracted forms came to provide a new visual system for a distinctive Late Antique art. Thus, this project deals with the technical, stylistic, and iconographic analysis of these reliefs and the Diocletianic complex to which they once belonged, and their contextualisation within Roman art and history. Main objectives are to shed light on the art and history of Late Roman Nikomedia, especially the aspects of the new state art and architecture under Diocletian’s imperial administration; to investigate polychrome relief sculpture, a little-known medium in Roman art; and to understand the origins of Late Antique art.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз