Fascinating to see the realism of these portraits degrade toward the end of the empire....pic.twitter.com/wHOMHduxUQ
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thanks I appreciate it! I understand that tastes can change (and want to learn if that’s the case!), but I can’t shake the impression that the former image here is “better” and that no emperor trying to project his power would want to look like the latter....pic.twitter.com/ZdBD0D4cRP
You're onto something. It is true that traditions of drawing changed. And for reasons you can imagine, it is currently fashionable to emphasize that explanation. But it's also true that most things were done worse in the late Empire.
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unfortunately I only have this one image =/. maybe try googling for “[emperor name] coin”?
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Thanks, yeah, I worry a lot about getting misled by fashionable explanations. Don’t know when to trust my own intuition/older explanations vs. modern scholarship, but I’m biasing to the former more and more =/
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The older explanations (mere decline) were also fashionably mistaken. The truth is a mix.
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