Book contents
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The Imperial Context
- 2 The Gandharan Problem
- 3 Writing the Art, Archaeology and Religion of the Roman Mediterranean
- 4 Mystery Cult and Material Culture in the Graeco-Roman World
- 5 The Viennese Invention of Late Antiquity: Between Politics and Religion in the Forms of Late Roman Art
- 6 The Rise of Byzantine Art and Archaeology in Late Imperial Russia
- 7 Ferdinand Piper’s Monumentale Theologie (1867) and Schleiermacher’s Legacy: The Attempted Foundation of a Protestant Theology of Art
- Part II After Imperialism: Orientalism and its Resistances
- Part III Post-Colonialist, Old Colonialist and Nationalist Fantasies
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
5 - The Viennese Invention of Late Antiquity: Between Politics and Religion in the Forms of Late Roman Art
from Part I - The Imperial Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2020
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The Imperial Context
- 2 The Gandharan Problem
- 3 Writing the Art, Archaeology and Religion of the Roman Mediterranean
- 4 Mystery Cult and Material Culture in the Graeco-Roman World
- 5 The Viennese Invention of Late Antiquity: Between Politics and Religion in the Forms of Late Roman Art
- 6 The Rise of Byzantine Art and Archaeology in Late Imperial Russia
- 7 Ferdinand Piper’s Monumentale Theologie (1867) and Schleiermacher’s Legacy: The Attempted Foundation of a Protestant Theology of Art
- Part II After Imperialism: Orientalism and its Resistances
- Part III Post-Colonialist, Old Colonialist and Nationalist Fantasies
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
Summary
There is a very good case for supposing that not only the idea of late antique art, but indeed of late antiquity itself as a meaningful historical period, was invented in Vienna in the late nineteenth century. The ideological dynamics are significant, and help to explain the usual understanding of a temporal formulation (‘late antiquity’) to determine what is in fact a culturally and geographically specific designation – that is, a European-centred history and archaeology, as opposed to one that looks more globally towards Asia. Indeed, east of Iran, no one uses the term ‘late antique’ for the artistic innovations of the first few centuries AD which led to the rise of distinctive artistic production in the religious cultures that have come to be called Buddhist, Jain and Hindu.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Empires of Faith in Late AntiquityHistories of Art and Religion from India to Ireland, pp. 110 - 127Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020