Image & Context (ICON) is the first international series that focuses on the image and the imagery in the ancient world. The most distinctive quality of the image is its unique suggestive potential. An image can both catch the viewer's attention in a fraction of a second and stamp itself forever on his mind. At the core of the series are the questions of how and by whom images were shaped and perceived, and how images functioned within and contributed to a specific cultural context. The series aims to stimulate new discussion about the visual cultures of the ancient world and new approaches towards a history of the image.

Portrayals of monsters and beasts set in long, alternate rows dominated early Greek art from 700 to about 550 BC. Lorenz Winkler-Horaek shows in detail to what extent Oriental models were adopted and how and when they were transformed by the pot painters of Corinth. In discovering the systematic structure which the painters invented to arrange monsters and beasts, Lorenz Winkler-Horaek argues for a new historical-anthropological reading: the monsters personify the fantastic dimension of the wilderness beyond the civilisation of the Greek Polis. By this rationalization of the irrational concept of the monster the pot painters created an unrivalled hallmark of the city's identity and power: in the crucial time of the shaping of the Greek polis the Corinthian imagery of monsters and beasts was both ubiquitous in the Mediterranean and very much in demand.

Autorentext

Lorenz Winkler-Horacek, Freie Universität Berlin.

Zusammenfassung

"This central thesis is attractive and persuasively argued, and supported by statistical charts and an impressive number of images."
Jenny Strauss Clay in: Religious Studies Review 44/1 (2018), 108

"Mit seiner Gesamtschau ist dem Autor ein überzeugender, vielschichtiger Beitrag zum Verständnis der frühgriechischen Bilder von Tieren und Mischwesen gelungen."
Martin A. Guggisberg in: Gnomon Bd. 89 (2017), Heft 7, S. 633-637

"Insgesamt zeichnet sich das Buch sowohl durch seine behutsame, methodisch geleitete und differenzierte Arbeitsweise, als auch durch hartnäckige, problemorientierte Interpretation aus."
Nikolaus Dietrich in: Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 20 (2017), S. 1087-1098