Power of Imagery: Essays on Rome, Italy & Imagination

The object of this volume is the use and reception of images, material and immaterial, in different forms, places and moments in history.
The authors have various scholarly backgrounds. Eight of them are historians, five are art historians, one is a sociologist, one an Arabist and one a Germanist. What the authors have in common is that they all stayed at the Netherlands Institute in Rome. What brought them together in this volume is the idea of producing a book written by fellows and ex-fellows of this Institute. The use and the reception of images offered itself spontaneously as a topic on which many of the visitors of the Institute had focused a part of their research in Rome.
While scholarly interest in the Italian image culture can be explained as a reaction to something different, there is also another motivation for this interest which lies, on the contrary, in the recognition of an essential part of a common Western tradition. Nowadays people still come to Rome in search of elements that are an integrated part of their own culture. The word “Rome” conjures up images which go beyond the current local city scene and are in spite of any aversion one might feel a natural component of one’s own Western identity. Especially those conducting historical research going further back than the recent past are inevitably confronted with the central role of Rome in the development of Western culture. Although Rome has lost its function as political and cultural center, this role still exists at a symbolic level. Throughout the European languages many words which derive from the language of the Roman empire remind one of the city’s glorious past.