Abstract
Both classical Greece and early imperial China saw the development of an artistic genre novel to each cultural tradition: visual depictions of historical events. This essay explores the development of the picturing of history in these two traditions from a long term institutional perspective. It compares the role played by works of art in the ancestralising strategies of elite kinship networks in the Western Zhou and archaic Greece, and how these were displaced by the practice of picturing history in classical Athens and early imperial China. The development of practices of picturing history is linked to the development of more differentiated state institutions, and the new uses of historical memory associated with the new forms of state. The distinctive Greek and Chinese use and character of such depictions were shaped by the differing balance of power among cultural elites and state agencies in classical Athens and early imperial China.
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