A portrait oil lamp from Pontes: Possible interpretations and meanings within early Byzantine visual culture
Abstract
The subject of this paper is a fragmented oil-lamp, discovered at Pontes
(east Serbia) dated to the 6th century, whose handle ending is shaped as a
woman’s head. The question posed in this paper is whether the image of this
woman could be identified as a portrait of some particular person or if it is
just as a pictorial sign with some complicated symbolic meaning. The
suggested identification alludes to the image of some of the empresses from
the second half of the 6th century.
Keywords:
Oil lamp / image / portrait / early Byzantine / empressSource:
Starinar, 2015, 65, 79-89Publisher:
- Arheološki institut, Beograd
Funding / projects:
- Romanization, urbanization and transformation of urban centres of civil, military and residential character in Roman provinces on territory of Serbia (RS-177007)
- IRS - Viminacium, roman city and military legion camp - research of material and non-material of inhabitants by using the modern technologies of remote detection, geophysics, GIS, digitalisation and 3D visualisation (RS-47018)