Studies on sculptural copy workshops in ancient Rome: acquisition and application of 3D digital data

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23320040
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Study of the arts/History of the arts/Arts in general
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: SENGOKU-HAGA Kyoko 東北大学, 文学研究科, 准教授 (80421840)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): OISHI Takeshi 東京大学, 生産技術研究所, 准教授 (80569509) ; ONO Shintaro 東京大学, 生産技術研究所, 特任准教授 (80526799)
• Research Collaborator: IKEUCHI Katsushi 東京大学, 情報学環, 教授 (30282601) ; KADER Ingeborg Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke in München, Director
• Project Period (FY): 2011-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 芸術諸学 / 美術史 / ギリシア彫刻 / ローマ美術 / 3D形状比較 / 国際情報交換

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this project around forty ancient statues have been 3D scanned with an accuracy of ±50μm and digitized into 3D models, to be used for extremely precise 3D shape comparisons. The results clarify that 1) ancient Roman sculpture workshops copied original Greek works very accurately especially with regards to the heads, hands and feet, 2) apart from the shape similarities, copies may vary in scale slightly, but 3) once normalized for scale differences, errors in the well-copied parts (heads, for example) are generally less than 2mm.
These results from the analysis of the Roman copies open the possibility of understanding how the process of creating the Greek bronze originals took place. Actually, it has been demonstrated that Polykleitos, the great Greek sculptor of the fifth century BCE, reused the model of his bronze Doryphoros in his other works.

Free Research Field

美術史