The volume under review is a catalogue of the Roman sculptures and architectural members with figural decoration deriving from the colony (founded in 42 b.c.) of Iulia Concordia, modern Concordia Sagittaria, now in the Museo Nazionale Concordiese di Portogruaro in Veneto.

The volume comprises two parts: a short introduction to the history of the collection, and the catalogue itself with 232 entries. The catalogue is organized into four sections: free-standing statues and statuettes; reliefs, honorific or funerary, and other types of reliefs; sarcophagus reliefs; and architectural ornamentation. This arrangement, which itself seems rather inexplicable — in particular as there are no certain honorific reliefs and funerary reliefs are separated from sarcophagus reliefs — was chosen because many pieces lack exact archaeological provenance. There is a vast bibliography and a useful appendix with a concordance between present inventory number, previous inventories, year of entry into the museum, and who or which institution found it where. Each catalogue entry is presented with all the existing documentation on the object's discovery and later history. The photos are generally good, although some sculptures might have merited a second angle.

Large-scale free-standing statues are few and almost all under the category of portraiture; there are some typical domestic decorative sculptures, including oscilla, pinaces, herms, a double herm, trapezophora/table legs and a small fountain. Yet, the discovery of the rich necropolis/necropoleis in the late nineteenth century substantially enlarged the museum's collection of funerary monuments. These give a good overview of the variety of the sculpted funerary monuments and their symbolism found in a typical provincial city in Roman Italy. This material allows for interesting discussions in a number of the entries on the quality of the funerary sculpture from the site, on the possibility of identifying individual hands among the sculptors and on chronology.

This is not the place to comment on individual catalogue entries, but a few remarks are apposite. Perhaps the most famous find from the site is a draped female statue possibly from the forum (cat. 1). The now headless statue probably portrayed an imperial Julio-Claudian woman and formed part of a dynastic group. There is a discussion of how the statue relates to a possible fourth-century b.c. prototype, but recent discussions are omitted (C. Hallet, JRA 18 (2005), 419−35). The use of the statue type as portrait carrier and its wide use in Italy during the first century a.d. is not discussed either (A. Alexandridis, Die Frauen des römischen Kaiserhauses (2004), table 12). A battered portrait (cat. 19) is convincingly identified as representing an emperor, but it does not portray Tiberius or Caligula, but rather Claudius. The complex iconography of the well-known so-called Apparitores relief (cat. 73), obviously inspired by the so-called state reliefs, is carefully analysed, but the relief's discovery in a necropolis is not really acknowledged. Is the reading of the relief as a commemoration of a high-ranking official in a specific public ritual the only possibility? Do we have to take all the attributes at face value following strict rules of representation in the narrative or is it in the context of a tomb that the relief is better understood as the imaginary compensation or comfort for a life and career that was abruptly and prematurely ended? Similarly a relief showing a person riding a triumphal chariot found in a necropolis by Palestrina, usually interpreted as a representation of the emperor Trajan, also displays a typical imperial or high official imagery influenced by the state reliefs. (On the Palestrina relief: L. Musso in E. La Rocca and S. Tortorella (eds), Trionfi Romani (2008), 141–3.) Yet, as both reliefs have been found in necropoleis, are they not better understood in that particular context: as commemorating a local worthy (in the Palestrina relief perhaps Q. Fabius Postuminus), magistrate or even a rich freedman who whatever his rôle in the military or in supporting his local community would not have been entitled to such an honour while alive? In death, however, in a provincial city away from Rome's public visual language, the emperor and the senatorial élite, such imagery helped to fulfill local ambitions and self-understanding. In short, the complex iconography of the Apparitores relief raises a number of interesting questions about how to read such public élite imagery in a local funerary context.

To be sure, with its palazzi accommodating spolia of the ancient city, the modern city of Portogruario can be characterized as a disiecta membra (ix) of Iulia Concordia. However, as all the sculptures and architectural decoration derive from one archaeological site, it would have been possible to take a contextual approach which would have placed this sculptural material in its local historical and artistic context. I miss a plan of the site indicating find spots, but most importantly I miss an overall evaluation of the sculptural production from this specific site and how it relates to other North Italian provincial towns: in the choices of material, in the choice of specific statue types, in technical execution and stylistic characteristics and in what way the sculptures may reflect the overall excavation situation, which type of buildings/spaces produced what kind of sculptures, how they relate to the discovered inscriptions etc. The structure of the catalogue has discouraged any such attempt. In fairness to Balestrazzi, it is important to stress here though that much information and discussion of the sculptural production and its significance can be extracted by reading carefully each catalogue entry. B.'s catalogue is a well-researched and well-documented work on a collection which will serve as a basis for future studies on both Roman sculpture from a specific site in Northern Italy and on the history of collecting in the Veneto.