EIKON - The Life of Greek Poatraits

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The research project 'EIKON - The Life of Greek Portraits' brings together a Franco-German group of scholars from Classical Studies with an emphasis in Classical Archaeology. Its subjects are portrait statues of the 5th through the 1st Century BC, which shaped prominently the visual culture of ancient Greece. For the first time, the life of these portrait statues from the time of their setting up until their destruction is the focal topic of a research project: their various transformations, appropriations and re-contextualizations through ritual practices, revisions, re-use, re-working, new installations, transfers etc. Since it is this dynamic process of tradition, reception and transformation that characterizes the use of Greek portraits, portraiture should be explained within this process and within their media, cultural and social contexts.The project combines systematic and exemplary studies on Greek portraits. These studies are not focused on the primary reasons for setting up portraits and their messages, but on the (re-) use of portrait statues in order to describe the dynamics of their cultural and communicative functions. For the purpose of this modern contextual approach a combination of archaeological, epigraphic and historical evidence is necessary. These fields of research have long-living and different research traditions in France and Germany. It is a purpose of EIKON to bring them into mutual, critical and fruitful discussion. Two perspectives are in the center of the research program: the real use of portraits, that is portrait-practices, like crownings, re-workings, rituals, etc., and their changing contexts of reception, that is re-contextualization, related to re-use, translations and transfers into new media.The intended goals of EIKON will be reached by the publication of monographs dealing with different, so far not studied phenomena in this research field, and by a comprehensive, systematically structured study on the Life of Greek portraits in the form of a manual. In addition, together with the Ecole francaise d'Athenes, the first comprehensive database of all relevant evidence related to the portraits set up in Delos will be developed, thus providing the testimonia of one of the best known and most important places to study the use and context of portraits in ancient Greece for further research. Furthermore, the actual research at two well studied and most important sites for the study of Greek portrait life will be contrasted mutually: Delos and Pergamon, which hitherto are examined largely isolated from each other by German and French institutions. It is the aim of a conference on ancient portraiture in Delos and Pergamon to compare the use and life of portraits in these two major urban centers of the Hellenistic world and thus to further promote the combination of different research traditions and the cooperation of research teams from Germany and France in the field of classical archaeology and visual studies.