Review by Choice Review
Stanwick discusses, catalogs, and illustrates a definitive corpus that he seeks to establish of portraits in Egyptian format of all the Greek Ptolemaic kings and queens who ruled Egypt from 306 to 30 BCE. The author discerns three stylistic approaches. One, called the "traditional mode," was the dominant style in the third century and followed earlier Egyptian models. The second, called the "Hellenized style," incorporated Greek hair and faces into statues with an Egyptian format and became the dominant style in the second century BCE. The third approach, called the "mezzo style," was manifested in provincial imitations of the "Hellenized style." More discussion of how the portraits reflected the political goals, characters, appearances, and habits of the Ptolemaic rulers would have made this book more interesting to read. It is also unclear why the author concludes that lively Greek features imbued portraits "with the remote and intangible aspects of pharaonic kingship." And the "curiously asymmetric" features in portrait faces have long been recognized as optical refinements in Greek sculpture. The black-and-white illustrations often do not adequately support the stylistic descriptions. ^BSumming Up: Optional. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. F. Van Keuren University of Georgia
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
