Description
The book that, with very little merit on my part, I was given the honor of introducing, for emotional reasons, I imagine, which I reciprocate, and probably because of my youthful passion for mosaics, which I have never abandoned, is one a study that will last a very long time: for the inescapable documentary value, for the very modern perspective, for the constant effort of close contextualization.
In the meantime, I think it is right to place it in one of the lines of study that in recent years have characterized the production of Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene and which led to the volumes of the Topography of Athens. Compared to that extensive and laborious collective study, which remains a basic premise, this constitutes a further step forward, because while it maintains the perspective of "historical topography", it actually inserts a specific "artistic" production. And this is an important aspect.
On the other hand, albeit indirectly, and in particular for the attention that he turns to the technical fact as an indispensable presupposition or means of the artistic one, I would say that it can be compared to a recent volume published in the same series of the School, Studies on economy of technai in Greece from the Archaic age to Hellenism; which demonstrates how this institution knows how to function in this time as a true research center, in which original and at the same time shared research perspectives are born and developed from the comparison. It seems to me the confirmation of the importance for our antiquities of this institution, not always adequately supported.
Another important technical-cultural point of reference, as expressed by the Author, is that constituted by the Atlas of Ancient Rome, a volume that has defined a new way of looking at (a) city as a whole.
It always seems important to me to identify the genesis of a study, because the books that generate other books have evidently obtained their natural purpose, that is to be fruitful, which is even more important when young scholars continue and develop a discourse. as in this case. I am sure that this volume, in turn, will generate others.
The studio is linked to a noble tradition, and unfortunately in many ways abandoned, that of corpora, whose function it reinterprets in a broader and more contemporary way. [...]
Gianluca Grassigli
In collaboration with SAMI, Società degli Archeologi Medievisti Italiani
