The Roman display contexts of the Three-Figure Reliefs

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the proveniences of the Three-Figure Reliefs, a distinctive class of mythological relief sculpture in Roman art dating from the first century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. The extant corpus of eighteen large-scale marble panels depicts five canonical Greek myths in Classical style. These replicas are generally considered to reproduce a series of reliefs from an unknown public monument erected in Athens during the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. This thesis reexamines the Roman replicas' little-noted archaeological proveniences to reveal their known ancient display contexts in the Roman period. Replicas of the Three-Figure Reliefs were displayed in the Domus Tiberiana, an imperial palace in Rome, the Villa Sora, a maritime luxury villa near Herculaneum, and the sanctuary of the Sacred Spring at Corinth. These contexts - private and public - suggest the Three-Figure Reliefs' different functions in Roman antiquity.