Images des Fondateurs. D'Énée à Romulus

The corpus of images depicting the “founding heroes” of Rome is a rich object of study because of its highly political, cultural and literary signification. The typological approach implemented during the study provides a new analysis of the formation and dissemination of figurative themes illustrating primordia Vrbis. It reveals, in fact, how the interplay of political designs and practices in the workshops contributes to the setting of a limited number of iconographic patterns. In other words, we perceive, according to the periods and the supports, not only a predilection for certain images, but also some iconographic formulas. The book is organised into two main parts. The first offers a rational approach of images: through a progression allowing to understand their evolution, from the theme to the pattern, from the scene depicted to the simplified image, we shall consider, one after the other, all the iconographic themes. Within each legend, figurative themes are analysed in both chronological and typological order to better identify the different stages of their formation and evolution. Finally, we find in a second part the entire catalogue of works, ordered according to a typological classification.