LIVART · LIVING WITH ART. Domestic decorative sculpture in Western Roman Empire: reconstructing display, sociocultural dynamics, and addressing productive and economic processes
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2025-05-01 → 2027-04-30
- EU contribution
- €202,125
- Participants
- 4
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
LIVING WITH ART. Domestic decorative sculpture in Western Roman Empire: reconstructing display, sociocultural dynamics, and addressing productive and economic processes
The project ‘LIVART – Living with Art’ explores the role of decorative sculpture in domestic contexts of the Western Roman Empire. While monumental sculpture in public spaces has long been studied, much less attention has been paid to the artistic expressions found inside Roman homes—both urban domus and rural villae. These artworks were not merely ornaments; they served to express cultural identity, status, and personal beliefs within private life. By focusing on domestic sculpture, LIVART addresses key questions about the everyday experience of art in Antiquity, the social dynamics of Roman households, and the complex relationships between aesthetics, power, and private space. The project draws on a multidisciplinary approach, integrating methods from archaeology, art history, material science, and digital humanities. It combines visual and iconographic analysis with archaeometric techniques (for marble provenance studies), 3D documentation, and contextual research to better understand how these objects were produced, displayed, and perceived. The project also contributes to wider debates in heritage studies and social history, offering new insights into how material culture shaped daily life in the Roman world. Its findings will inform museum practices, public engagement, and cultural policy by shedding light on a relatively understudied yet significant aspect of ancient art. Ultimately, LIVART aims to bridge academic research with public interest, promoting a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of ancient domestic environments and the people who lived in them.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
LIVART is a multidisciplinary, innovative project that will investigate decorative sculptures in domestic contexts during the Roman period. They offer insights into sociocultural practices of private Roman spaces, revealing aspects of daily life not recorded in written sources and reflecting personal preferences of their owners and inhabitants. The project examines function, aesthetic significance, and societal, economic, and cultural roles of these sculptures within Roman families. It aims to understand how they reflect and influence domestic practices, social relationships, gender and diversity roles, and economic dynamics in the Roman Empire. The research integrates archaeology, art history, archaeometry, and 3D/VR technologies to achieve its objectives. Geographically, it focuses on the Western Roman provinces, within a chronological framework extending from the Republican era to the end of the Empire. The project, developed at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Germany), is planned to last 24 months and includes an eight-month secondment phase in three renowned laboratories: Laboratory for Analysing Materials of Ancient origin (LAMA) at the Università Iuav di Venezia (Italy), the Stable Isotope Laboratory at the Institute of Environmental Geology and Geoengineering (IGAG) of the National Research Council in Rome, and the Department of Geology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). These secondments ensure the proper integration of various hard science methods and techniques for stone analysis, which are crucial to the project’s research objectives, particularly those productive and economic dynamics derived from the identification of raw materials used to carve the sculptures. Therefore, LIVART addresses significant knowledge gaps and employ advanced methods to preserve and disseminate European cultural heritage, potentially transforming our understanding of Roman domestic life and decorative sculpture.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101207732
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e51cf3b151&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e527cabebc&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union