6 - Lucian and Art History

Summary

Lucian is a master of ekphrasis – the art of rhetorical description and notably the vivid verbal evocation of works of art. One particular aspect of Lucian’s art historical enterprise is a comparative aesthetic. This extends beyond the comparison of artworks with other things or people (in texts whose titles signal such comparison) to some of the forms in which Lucian chose to write, notably dialogic media (whether dramatic of reported). This comparative game knowingly plays with the inevitable competition of art and text that inheres in the verbal description of the visual. Beyond this, Lucian takes synkrisis or comparison – a central trope in the rhetorical handbooks – and exploits it so as to give voice to the marginal, to elevate the alien and to emphasise questions of multiplicity and diversity within empire. This ideological exploitation of description is what in part has made Lucian so attractive and controversial since the era of Renaissance Humanism. The apparently unproblematic arena of visual aesthetics is brilliantly seized – not only by Lucian but also many of his modern readers – as a site within which to reveal the place, voice, and importance of cultural, ethnic and subaltern identities not always in simple harmony with the hegemonic status quo of the Roman empire.