Résumé

Bibliogr. p. 146-149

In late antiquity, art actively participated in historical developments. New public monuments were erected in conjunction with political and institutional transformation. In the world of late antique images, the dynamics of change emerge as a profound dialectic between continuity and rupture, conservation and transformation. The vocabulary of art and the forms of its style were changing; subjects were reinterpreted and used in new ways; rules of perception were taking new directions; familiar art objects adopted new forms. Some developments were interpreted as momentous events and revolutions, and they greatly influenced the view of late antiquity and its images in the eyes of scholars, poets, and intellectuals. The mosaics covering the living spaces of the late antique aristocracies emphasized the functions of these spaces and displayed individual characteristics as well as the habitus of the class to which the dominus belonged.