Jocelyn Toynbee

Jocelyn Mary Catherine Toynbee, (3 March 1897 – 31 December 1985 ) was an English archaeologist and art historian. "In the mid-twentieth century she was the leading British scholar in Roman artistic studies and one of the recognized authorities in this field in the world." ). Her brother Arnold J. Toynbee was the noted universal historian.

Toynbee was awarded a scholarship to and educated at Winchester High School for Girls and (like her mother) at Newnham College, Cambridge (1916–20), where she achieved a First in the Classical Tripos. Toynbee completed her doctoral thesis at Oxford University on the subject of Hadrianic sculpture, awarded her DPhil in 1930.

Toynbee never married. Raised as an Anglican, she converted to Catholicism. Her work with John Bryan Ward-Perkins on the Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican excavations (published in 1956) had a particular significance for her. Toynbee was awarded various research awards and was a student in the 1920s at both the British School at Athens and the British School at Rome, maintaining strong links with the latter throughout her career, and serving as the Chair of the Faculty from 1954-59. and dedicated her Thames and Hudson Monograph on 'The Art of the Romans' to Strong in 1965.

Her research interests ranged widely, including sculpture, coins and medals, painting, mosaics, gemstones, metalwork and much else. She joined Ward-Perkins and Kathleen Kenyon on a survey of Roman and Christian remains in Tripolitania in 1948. In 1949, she is pictured attending the inaugural Congress of Roman Frontier Studies in Newcastle.

In the summer of 1961, Toynbee wrote the handlist and catalogue for a major exhibition at the Goldsmiths' Hall, London to mark the 50th year of The Roman Society on the subject of Roman Art in Britain, She was Vice-President of The Roman Society from 1946. A review of the Roman Society for its centenary suggests that Margerie Venables Taylor hoped to have Toynbee appointed President in 1962 but that a trial session of Council made it clear that she was too deaf to function effectively in the post.

A complete list of her works to 1972 was published in the Papers of the British School at Rome. A painting of her by Catriona Jane Cursham held in Newnham College depicts her with a curled up white cat.

Honours Toynbee was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) in 1943. In 1952, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). She was awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Newcastle (1967) and Liverpool (1968).

She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973. In 1977, an edited volume of 20 papers was published in honour of her eightieth birthday, in which Martin Robertson states that “No one has done more than she – no one perhaps so much – to establish and make clear the profound unity of the Greco-Roman artistic tradition”. She was awarded the Frend Medal from the Society of Antiquaries of London for her work on early Christian Archaeology in 1984.

A further collected volume of papers in memory of Toynbee was published in 1988.

Key works The Hadrianic school: a chapter in the history of Greek art, 1934 Roman Medallions, 1944 Some Notes on Artists in the Roman World, Brussels, 1951 Christianity in Roman Britain, 1953 The Ara Pacis Reconsidered, Proc. Brit. Acad. ,1953 (with J.B. Ward-Perkins) The Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican Excavations, 1956 The Flavian Reliefs from the Palazzo delle Cancellaria in Rome, 1957 Art in Roman Britain, 1962 Art in Britain under the Romans, 1964 The Art of the Romans, 1965 Death and Burial in the Roman World, 1971 Animals in Roman Life and Art, 1973 Roman Historical Portraits, 1978 The Roman Art Treasures from The Temple of Mithras 1986