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Message:: [QUOTE="Gavin Richardson, post: 5203000, member: 83956"]My favorite description of the new styles ushered in by the tetrarchy, from Peter Leithart's DEFENDING CONSTANTINE: [T]he Tetrarchs’ faces exude stern moral discipline: their wild “burning gaze” communicates their passion for restoring Roman order.… The scrutinizing eyes of the Tetrarchs are the eyes of the tribal fathers, the gods of the past, who ensure conformity with Rome's founding traditions. More important, Tetrarchan art communicates the union of the four. A corner of St. Mark’s, Venice, is now the site of a statuary group in porphyry showing the four original Tetrarchs in groups of two, embracing. The faces are indistinguishable, apart from the fact that two—presumably senior—members are bearded. A porphyry bust of a tetrarch in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, is even more stylized. Large eyes bug out from the stone, staring intensely; the hair and beard are stippled in regular rows; the forehead is furrowed and wrinkled with an imperious intensity. Who is it? No one knows. The point is not to depict a person but a power. --Leithart (2015): 45.[/QUOTE]