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How did the statues of ancient Greece wind up dictating art history in the West? How did the material culture of the Greeks and Romans come to be seen as "classical" and as "art"? What does "classical art" mean across time and place? In this ambitious, richly illustrated book, art historian and classicist Caroline Vout provides an original history of how classical art has been continuously redefined over the millennia as it has found itself in new contexts and cultures. All of this raises the question of classical art´s future. A unique exploration of how each period of Western culture has transformed Greek and Roman antiquities and in turn been transformed by them, this book revolutionizes our understanding of what classical art has meant and continues to mean.

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"This is an ambitious, highly original, and timely book. It is a sophisticated contribution to art history, classics, classical archaeology, and classical reception studies, and will be essential reading for scholars in all these fields."--Elizabeth Prettejohn, author of The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture: Greek Sculpture and Modern Art from Winckelmann to Picasso

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Caroline Vout is Reader in Classics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ´s College. Her books include Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome, The Hills of Rome: Signature of an Eternal City, and Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome.

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