Uncovering the Virtues of Peace within Visual Culture: The Case for Nonviolence and Imperfect Peace in the Western Tradition

Abstract

Artworks are both artifacts and agents of history that offer their own proposals about the realities that surround them, including conflict and the possibilities for peace. In so doing, they present a framework for reflection that may reveal underexamined didactic texts on alternative ways of dealing with conflicts. Our academic fields are art history and ancient history, and in this essay, we argue that any attempt to locate the contributions of art to the history of peacemaking must begin by rethinking the questions we normally ask ourselves about visual culture (whether archaeological or artistic) and the values that we choose to emphasize. To this end, we first explain the connections between art and peace, and the benefit of the study of art history in researching historical perspectives on peace. We then focus on the analysis of one specific case: the images of the virtues in the ancient Greek and Roman world and their relationship to what we consider to be an enduring culture of peace within the Western tradition. Finally, we show how this classical heritage of peace and the virtues has been kept alive as a useful discourse that has provided an accessible guide to the habits and behaviors (or, as we call them, “virtues”) necessary to achieve the desired peace that artworks have long envisioned.