https://ausonius.u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr/index.php/presentation/annuaire?elodie.bezille

Bordeaux Montaigne University

My current research consist to bring together a vast collection of iconographic images of Hellenistic queens and the ideological uses of their images, both in propaganda and in the political representation. The media of these royal iconographies range from numismatics and glyptics. My subject covers all iconographies showing women associated with power as vehicles of royal ideologies or bearers of political messages, from the IVth to the Ist centuries BC. Iconographies of divinisation, iconographies of dynastic legitimation, and iconographies of royal propaganda, are the main topics of my study.

In a resolutely multidisciplinary approach, to complement the comparative method of art history, the diversity of the gathered artefacts is combined for interpretation with the study of epigraphy and literature, as well as with a historical reading of the subject. All clues identified this way are put into perspective in order to build a semiological analysis of the messages convoyed by the image of the sovereigns, in particular the way in which meaning is expressed in the iconography. By identifying specific signifiers, we can make effective comparisons, highlighting the transfers or differences from one iconography to another. My study attempts to present a large corpus of iconography, in order to show and explain the political use of queen’s image in the Hellenistic era.

- Iconography of Hellenistic queens
- Royal propaganda images on coins and glyptics
- Comparative reflections on the staging of the image of queens by Hellenistic royal ideologies