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movements and in which the climate and lifestyle of the imagined Mediterranean
provide a space for recuperation from the stresses of modernity. In the post-World
War One era, many painters formerly drawn to abstraction turned to the classical past
for a subject matter of prosperity and historical continuity and a style and structure
indicative of natural law and known values. Picasso’s Two Women Running on a Beach
(1922) is indicative of this shift. Likewise works of artists such as Giorgio De Chirico
relied on the Mediterranean to represent a search for continuity with past ideals in the
wake of World War One.
The Mediterranean thus sits at the center of various diverse painterly agendas. In
the early modern era it could index mercantile and colonial trade routes and itineraries
in the service of proclaiming prosperity and empire, in many ways akin to the diverse
origins of marble celebrated in the ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia or to the Apadana reliefs
of Persepolis. For modern European artists, however, the Mediterranean takes on
further associations as it comes to define a style and mythology of prosperity, origins
and universalism. In this modern context the Mediterranean comes to serve as an
imaginary gateway to the Orient and also a conduit to the past imbued with romanti-
cism, nostalgia, and primordial idealism.
Endnotes1 While the present Parthenon was begun in 447 and dedicated in 438, its sculptural elements
were installed in 432. Interpretations of the frieze remain contested, but most scholars
agree that it relates in some way to the Great Panathenaia.
2 Root (1985) argues strongly for a specific thematic and formal relationship between the two
visual programs.
3 See, for example, Ousterhout and Ruggles in Gesta, 2004; Canepa in Ars Orientalis, 2008;
Caskey, Cohen and Safran in Medieval Encounters, 2011; and Grossman and Walker in
Medieval Encounters, 2012.
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