MAKING AN IMPRESSION: REPLICATION AND THE ONTOLOGY OF THE GRAECO‐ROMAN SEAL STONE

Abstract

The debate on replication in ancient art has traditionally concentrated upon Roman ‘copies’ of famous Greek sculptures and paintings. This article explores a different, but no less significant, kind of replication – the use of intaglio gems as seals to create wax impressions. The mechanical transmission of a glyptic image from one medium to another played an important role in Graeco‐Roman society, conferring authority upon the seal as an individual or state signature employed in legal, political and personal exchange. The direct relationship between seal and impression was also appropriated by Greek philosophers as a metaphor for unmediated sense perception – the ‘impressions’ made by material objects upon the soul. However, as a comparison with the ontological issues surrounding the modern photograph shows, the seemingly unproblematic relationship between image and impression is more complex than may initially seem: the seal's philosophical appeal lay ultimately more in its social significance – as a guarantor of authenticity and marker of the self – than in its true ontological status.

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