L’arte buddhista del Gandhāra tra percezione e realtà archeologica

The very definition of Gandharan art is currently the subject of discussions that involve not only the phenomenon itself but also the entire theoretical framework of our interpretive models. The Buddhist art of Gandhāra, flourishing in the early centuries of the common era in an area spanning from northern Pakistan to eastern Afghanistan, is characterized by the strong Hellenistic influence on much of its production. But what lies within this apparent subjection to imported models? To understand the fluid, dynamic, and yet rigorous world of iconographic models, their creation and re-creation, we must question all the actors involved, resorting also to archaeology and the complex reconstructions it is capable of offering us today of cultures in contact with each other, each with its own physiognomy and the ground which, in an original way, predisposes each to encounter with the others.