The reception of Classical antiquity in Calabria, 500-1700

• Main Author: Bouchard, Dominique S.
• Published: University of Oxford 2010
• Subjects: 937.76
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.600390

This study considers the reception of classical objects in Calabria from the final years of Roman dominance in the region to the end of Spanish Habsburg control of the Kingdom of Naples at the end of the seventeenth century. It argues that despite political and cultural fragmentation across the region, the reception of Greek and/or Roman objects in Calabria has had a continuous role in the development of a regional identity with multiple socio-political and cultural facets. By tracing developments in the discovery, collection and scholarship of classical antiquities in Calabria, this study helps to highlight interpretations of classical objects across overlapping geopolitical areas and periods of time. It shows how reception of ancient Greek and Roman antiquities evolved over time and how the manner of their discovery, display and scholarship influenced reception in later periods and therefore nuanced aspects of reception in different periods can best be understood in the context of past receptions. It is therefore a secondary argument of this study that reception is usefully studied as a self-reflexive tradition of interpretation and reinterpretation across temporal and geographic boundaries. Archival evidence from Calabria helps to support an approach to the past in which historical authenticity was regulated by texts rather display.