Abstract
Alois Riegl’s Late Roman Art Industry has been one of the most influential books in the historiography of art and archaeology since its publication in Vienna in 1901. Riegl’s treatise fundamentally altered the way Late Antique art was perceived and evaluated by historicising vision and theorising the relativity of aesthetic ideals. This article claims that Riegl’s argument was originally made in images as well as in text, but that his visual rhetoric was lost when Otto Pächt edited Late Roman Art Industry for republication in 1927 and changed its illustrations. The article demonstrates that Pächt’s pictorial amendments manifest the concerns of a new generation of formalist art historians, raising broader questions regarding the role of photography in art history’s disciplinary codification. Restoring Riegl’s visual argument, the article contends that Riegl used photography to visualise his innovative methodology and model a historically specific gaze.
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