Roman Sarcophagus News (blog)

Berlin's Bode Museum online: 360º panoramic tour of the museum's sarcophagi

2/15/2016

Berlin's gorgeous Bode Museum has launched itself online. Virtual visitors can now navigate at will through a full 360º panoramic tour of the entire museum, complete with clickable objects.

This panoramic tour includes room 115, the sarcophagus room, offering a nice assemblage of late 3rd- and early 4th-century metropolitan specimens. Some, but not all, of these feature early Christian imagery — the reason, one suspects, that they were purchased for the museum's 'Byzantine' collection in the first place.

Standouts include:

a curious bucolic piece with scenes of grape- and olive-harvesting interrupted by an unexpected equestrian,
a Jonah sarcophagus,
another important early Christian piece with the (very rare) figures of Cain and Abel,
and a strigillated piece whose portraits are unfinished: not only have their facial features been left uncarved (which is very common), but also — and this is very unusual — their hands too. (For another unusual example of hands left uncarved, see my blog post on a similar piece in the Capitoline.)

Below is a still screenshot taken from the virtual tour. Click on it to explore the room and objects yourself.

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book by Theodosia Stefanidou-Tiveriou: local sarcophagi from Thessaloniki

2/13/2016

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This recent monograph by Theodosia Stefanidou-Tiveriou is a welcome addition to the DAI's Sarkophag-Studien series. By focusing solely on sarcophagi produced for one small local market, she is able to analyze the close relationship between quarriers, carvers, and clients that yielded these pieces — a relationship far closer than the one underlying sarcophagi carved in Rome's teeming capital, or those sculpted in eastern centers (such as Docimium/Dokimeion) for the anonymous export market.

Given the prominent role played by inscriptions on these Thessalonian products, the book is to be commended for its close attention to epigraphic matters as well as its thorough catalog of objects, as might be expected from a German publication.

The full reference:
Theodosia Stefanidou-Tiveriou, Die lokalen Sarkophage aus Thessaloniki, Sarkophag-Studien, no. 8 (Ruhpolding: Rutzen Verlag, 2014).

For a detailed review, see the recent BMCR by Christian Russenberger.

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