De architectura, 6.3.4

Item

Text Category
Literature: prose
Century Range
Location of Display
Reference
De architectura, 6.3.4
Quotation
Imagines item alte cum suis ornamentis ad latitudinem sint constitutae.
Part of Speech
Type of Thing Ornamented
Visual Work: Portrait
Object/ Person Ornamented
Imagines (wax mask portraits of ancestors)
Type of Medium Ornamenting
Visual Work: Jewellery
Visual Work: Sculpture: Statue
Visual Work: Inscription
Medium/a Ornamenting
Unspecified, but other context suggests: jewellery, sculpted drapery, inscriptions
Bibliography
Quatremère de Quincy 1815: 37
Notes
"Ornaments of imagines". Unclear. They are to be set up with them, so presumably detachable. Possibly jewellery? Or attributes? (Old sense of "ornamentum" as "equipment". Or, as De Quincy suggested were used, sculpted busts complete with the "commencement of drapery" (which one could interpret together as "ornamenta") from which the masks could then be detached for use in funerary processions. The verb here suggested that the masks were "set up" rather than hung, so it is perhaps so.
Item Identifier
A00203
Determination
Interpreted from context