Chiara Ballestrazzi | Università di Pisa (original) (raw)
Papers by Chiara Ballestrazzi
Antike Kunst, 2021
According to ancient aesthetics, the art of gem engraving involved a special cooperation of human... more According to ancient aesthetics, the art of gem engraving involved a special cooperation of human and natural artistry, and was characterized by a peculiar fluidity in its relationship with the “major” arts, namely painting and sculpture. Literary sources point to the hybrid status of glyptics, which from a technical viewpoint is indeed a form of sculpture, but whose medium possesses a natural mimetic potentiality which is eminently pictorial: engravers paint with precious stones like painters with pigments, giving semantic significance to the natural colours, veins and spots of the mineral. Alongside literary sources, on the peculiar ambiguity of glyptics with respect to painting and sculpture played the engravers who signed their intaglios and cameos assuming the names of great painters and sculptors of the past. The analysis of two jaspers signed by the imperial engraver Aspasios discloses the room left to the creativity of the glyptic artist when he confronts the celebrated masterpieces of painting and sculpture.
Revue archéologique, 2020
Focusing on the personalities of engravers and jewellers known from literary sources and signatur... more Focusing on the personalities of engravers and jewellers known from literary sources and signatures on intaglios and cameos, this study outlines some fundamental peculiarities of the art of gems in Greece and Rome. In antiquity, glyptics and jewellery were almost never considered under the historical and diachronic perspective necessary for the development of a canon of artists and of a ‘history of art’ equivalent to those of painting and sculpture. The exceptional recognition of a past of the glyptic art and of successions of masters and disciples was made possible by initiative of the artists themselves: it is thanks to the signatures on gems and cameos that today we know two dynasties of engravers, and that the masterpieces of the great Hellenistic and Roman masters could be appreciated as such also after centuries of gradual decline of the art of engraving precious stones.
Keywords. – Glyptics. Jewellery. Gem artists. Signatures. Pliny the Elder. Posidippus of Pella. Dynasties of engravers. Historical perspective. Ars. Materia.
RFIC - Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica, 2017
Symposia by Chiara Ballestrazzi
Conference, Università di Pisa, 8-9 June 2023
by Carolina Naya Franco, Salvo Micciché, Elena Almirall Arnal, Chiara Ballestrazzi, Iva Kaić, Elizaveta Krasnodubets, Maurizio Buora, Alessandra Magni, Meredith P . Nelson, Claudia Tozzi, and Joanna S Smith
Colloquia Anatolica et Aegaea Congressus internationales Smyrnenses XI, Izmir (Turkey)
Congressus internationales Smyrnenses by Chiara Ballestrazzi
by Ergun LAFLI, Alev Çetingöz, Melih Veziroglu, Isabelle Bertrand, Salvo Micciché, Gabriella Tassinari, Marcio Teixeira-Bastos, Julio Miguel Román Punzón, Paolo Vitellozzi, Simone Michel-von Dungern, Dr. phil. habil., Maurizio Buora, Roksana Chowaniec, Ciupercă Bogdan, Jasmina S. Ciric, Elena Almirall Arnal, Carolina Naya Franco, Achim Irina, Chiara Ballestrazzi, Fabio Bosco, Andrzej B. Biernacki, Elena Klenina, Athina Chroni, Lilian Karali, Cristea Stefana, Gabriela Filip, Amanda Gómez Checa, Elizaveta Krasnodubets, Anna Namoylik, Germana Perani, Torben Schreiber, Alina (Muşat) Streinu, Dan Pîrvulescu, Claudia Tozzi, Eleni Tsatsou, and Radu Ardevan
Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine engraved gems in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea area. An international e-conference on archaeological and archaeogemological approaches, 2024
Conference Presentations by Chiara Ballestrazzi
Organised Conferences by Chiara Ballestrazzi
Antike Kunst, 2021
According to ancient aesthetics, the art of gem engraving involved a special cooperation of human... more According to ancient aesthetics, the art of gem engraving involved a special cooperation of human and natural artistry, and was characterized by a peculiar fluidity in its relationship with the “major” arts, namely painting and sculpture. Literary sources point to the hybrid status of glyptics, which from a technical viewpoint is indeed a form of sculpture, but whose medium possesses a natural mimetic potentiality which is eminently pictorial: engravers paint with precious stones like painters with pigments, giving semantic significance to the natural colours, veins and spots of the mineral. Alongside literary sources, on the peculiar ambiguity of glyptics with respect to painting and sculpture played the engravers who signed their intaglios and cameos assuming the names of great painters and sculptors of the past. The analysis of two jaspers signed by the imperial engraver Aspasios discloses the room left to the creativity of the glyptic artist when he confronts the celebrated masterpieces of painting and sculpture.
Revue archéologique, 2020
Focusing on the personalities of engravers and jewellers known from literary sources and signatur... more Focusing on the personalities of engravers and jewellers known from literary sources and signatures on intaglios and cameos, this study outlines some fundamental peculiarities of the art of gems in Greece and Rome. In antiquity, glyptics and jewellery were almost never considered under the historical and diachronic perspective necessary for the development of a canon of artists and of a ‘history of art’ equivalent to those of painting and sculpture. The exceptional recognition of a past of the glyptic art and of successions of masters and disciples was made possible by initiative of the artists themselves: it is thanks to the signatures on gems and cameos that today we know two dynasties of engravers, and that the masterpieces of the great Hellenistic and Roman masters could be appreciated as such also after centuries of gradual decline of the art of engraving precious stones.
Keywords. – Glyptics. Jewellery. Gem artists. Signatures. Pliny the Elder. Posidippus of Pella. Dynasties of engravers. Historical perspective. Ars. Materia.
RFIC - Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica, 2017
by Ergun LAFLI, Alev Çetingöz, Melih Veziroglu, Isabelle Bertrand, Salvo Micciché, Gabriella Tassinari, Marcio Teixeira-Bastos, Julio Miguel Román Punzón, Paolo Vitellozzi, Simone Michel-von Dungern, Dr. phil. habil., Maurizio Buora, Roksana Chowaniec, Ciupercă Bogdan, Jasmina S. Ciric, Elena Almirall Arnal, Carolina Naya Franco, Achim Irina, Chiara Ballestrazzi, Fabio Bosco, Andrzej B. Biernacki, Elena Klenina, Athina Chroni, Lilian Karali, Cristea Stefana, Gabriela Filip, Amanda Gómez Checa, Elizaveta Krasnodubets, Anna Namoylik, Germana Perani, Torben Schreiber, Alina (Muşat) Streinu, Dan Pîrvulescu, Claudia Tozzi, Eleni Tsatsou, and Radu Ardevan
Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine engraved gems in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea area. An international e-conference on archaeological and archaeogemological approaches, 2024