Christopher Ratte

This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of watercolor paintings by American artist Wendy Artin and selected objects from the Museum's permanent collections. Wendy Artin has been working for over a decade on a series of watercolors of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and related subjects. She is thus a fresh presence in a long line of artists who draw inspiration from antiquity. Indeed, this tradition has very ancient precedents. The exhibition and catalogue place a selection of 47 of Artin's paintings--including landscapes and figure paintings as well as images of ancient sculptures--in dialogue with 14 objects drawn from the Kelsey's collections, among them works of Greek art inspired by Egyptian precedents, examples of Roman imperial portraits that were copied in numerous media for circulation around the empire, and reproductions of the same figure types featured in some of Artin's paintings (such as Aphrodite Rising from the Sea). Wendy Artin's masterful watercolors offer new and arresting ways of looking at ancient sculptures and buildings--and of remembering the classical past. Includes 81 colour illustrations.

Aphrodisias is one of the most important archaeological sites of the Greek and Roman periods in Turkey. Excavations at Aphrodisias have been carried out by New York University since 1961 and have revealed an unusually well-preserved and picturesque ancient town. A survey of the surrounding territory undertaken between 2005 and 2009 resulted in the discovery of hundreds of new sites spanning three millennia of human occupation in the region. This book presents the rich archaeological remains of the countryside of Aphrodisias, ranging from isolated farmsteads to fortified citadels, from burial mounds to marble quarries, and from Roman aqueducts to Ottoman cisterns.

From the sixth to the fourth century B.C., the western Anatolian region of Lydia was home to a distinctive local tradition of ashlar masonry construction. The earliest datable example of fine stone masonry in the environs of Sardis, the capital of the Lydian empire, is the tomb of King Alyattes, who died in ca. 560 B.C. Contemporary monuments include a city gate and monumental terraces. Alyattes’ son Croesus was overthrown by the Persians in 547 B.C., but the Lydian building tradition survived in chamber tombs at Sardis and throughout Lydia.This richly illustrated volume examines the monuments of Sardis and environs in the context of contemporary developments in Lydia and throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The study of Lydian architecture illuminates traditions of Anatolian kingship, technological exchange between Lydia and Greece and the Near East, and the origins of Persian imperial architecture.