The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity

Sather Classical Lectures

by Paul Zanker

This richly illustrated work provides a new and deeper perspective on the interaction of visual representation and classical culture from the fifth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. Drawing on a variety of source materials such as Graeco-Roman literature, historiography, and philosophy, in addition to artistic renderings, Paul Zanker forges the first comprehensive history of the visual representation of Greek and Roman intellectuals. He takes the reader from the earliest visual images of Socrates and Plato to the figures of Christ, the Apostles, and contemporaneous pagan and civic dignitaries.
Through his interpretations of postures, gestures, facial expressions, and stylistic changes of particular set pieces, we come to know these great poets and philosophers through all of their various personas—the prophetic wise man, the virtuous democratic citizen, or the self-absorbed bon vivant. Zanker's analysis of how the iconography of influential thinkers and writers changed demonstrates the rise and fall of trends and the movement of schools of thought and belief, each successively embodying the most valued characteristics of the period and culture.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Art

426 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Paul Zanker is the professor of Storia dell’Arte Antica at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Previously Zanker was professor of classical archaeology at the University of Munich (1976–2002) and the University of Göttingen (1972–1976). He is a noted expert on Roman art and archaeology and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, of the Academia Europaea, of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Pontifical Academy of Archaeology and of the German Archaeological Institute. From 1990 to 1991 he was the Sather professor of the University of California at Berkeley. Zanker is head of the German Commission for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum.

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