Publisher's Synopsis
Inside Roman palaces, the display of art was calibrated to an increasingly accentuated dynamism of social and official life, activated by the moving bodies and the attention of residents and visitors. Display unfolded in space in a purposeful narrative that reflected rank, honor, privilege, and intimacy.
With a contextual approach that encompasses the full range of media, from textiles to stucco, this study traces the influential emerging concept of a unified interior. It argues that art history-even the emergence of the modern category of fine art-was worked out as much in the rooms of palaces as in the printed pages of Vasari and other early writers on art.