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Roman sarcophagus fragment is poster child for ISAW's Time & Cosmos exhibition

12/10/2016

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Time and Cosmos in Greco-Roman Antiquity, an exciting exhibition on ancient conceptions of chronology and cosmology, is currently on show at NYU's Institute for the Study of the ancient World (ISAW).

Curated by Alexander Jones, director of the ISAW, the exhibition brings together over 100 ancient objects from museums worldwide, from Greek calendars marking stellar phenomena  to Roman sundials, astrologers' boards, zodiacal friezes, and — yes — sarcophagi.

A fragment of an early Antonine Roman sarcophagus showing two Cupids playfully interfering with a sundial is one of the exhibition's highlights.  But what business do they have on a sarcophagus?  Likely they are trying to reset the sundial, suggests Alexander Jones in a fine write-up for Hyperallergic — attempting to reverse the march of time  that has taken a life.

On loan from the Louvre, the fragment stands as the exhibition's cover image.  It does make for a lovely poster child.
Fragment of a Roman sarcophagus showing Cupids playing with a sundial (140-160 AD), marble (courtesy Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines, © RMN-Grand Palais / Hervé Lewandowski Art Resource, NY).
Fragment of a Roman sarcophagus showing Cupids playing with a sundial (140–160 AD), marble (courtesy Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines, © RMN-Grand Palais / Hervé Lewandowski Art Resource, NY).
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book by Elsner and Huskinson (eds.):  Life, Death, and Representation

11/20/2014

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A relatively recent collection of essays on Roman sarcophagi, edited by Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson, is — as far as I'm aware — the first edited volume of its kind in English.  It contains some gems.

The full reference:
Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson (eds.), Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, Millennium Studies, no. 29 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011).

The essays therein:
Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson (eds.), Life Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011).
      -     Jaś Elsner, "Introduction".
  1. Glenys Davis, "Before Sarcophagi".
  2. Janet Huskinson, "Habent sua fata: Writing Life Histories of Roman Sarcophagi".
  3. Francisco Prado-Vilar, "Tragedy's Forgotten Beauty: The Medieval Return of Orestes".
  4. Ben Russell, "The Roman Sarcophagus 'Industry': A Reconsideration".
  5. van Keuren, Attanasio, Herrmann, Herz, and Gromet, "Multimethod Analyses of Roman Sarcophagi at the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome".
  6. Zahra Newby, "In the Guise of Gods and Heroes: Portrait Heads on Roman Mythological Sarcophagi".
  7. Stine Birk, "Man or Woman? Cross-Gendering and Individuality on Third Century Roman Sarcophagi".
  8. Björn Ewald, "Myth and Visual Narrative in the Second Sophistic — a Comparative Approach: Notes on an Attic Hippolytos Sarcophagus in Agrigento".
  9. Katharina Lorenz, "Image in Distress? The Death of Meleager on Roman Sarcophagi".
  10. Dennis Trout, "Borrowed Verse and Broken Narrative: Agency, Identity, and the (Bethesda) Sarcophagus of Bassa".
  11. Jaś Elsner, "Image and Rhetoric in Early Christian Sarcophagi: Reflections on Jesus' Trial".
  12. Edmund Thomas, "'Houses of the Dead'? Columnar Sarcophagi as 'Micro-Architecture'".
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Why does Hercules look like Uncle Rufus?

2/19/2014

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Mythological frieze sarcophagus showing the Labors of Hercules. Ca. 240-250 AD. Rome, Palazzo Altemps (inv. 8642).
Mythological frieze sarcophagus showing the Labors of Hercules. Ca. 240-250 AD. Rome, Palazzo Altemps (inv. 8642).
Detail of Roman mythological frieze sarcophagus showing the Labors of Hercules. Ca. 240-250 AD. Rome, Palazzo Altemps (inv. 8642).
This elaborate Roman sarcophagus is entirely devoted to the Labors of Hercules.  Its strategy is to array the twelve episodes in a sequence which stretches across the entire front face of the coffin and wraps around onto the (now missing) ends.

If you’re thinking that this looks oddly familiar, you’re right to wonder.  Our previous post looked at another sarcophagus which similarly featured the Labors of Hercules.  Here it is again:
Roman mythological frieze sarcophagus showing the Labors of Hercules. Ca. 170 AD. Mantua, Palazzo Ducale.
You’ll notice immediately how similar the compositions are.  Sure, there are minor differences:  the head and torso of the Hydra on today’s piece (second episode from the left) is considerably less monstrous.  Eurystheus looks even more ludicrous as he takes refuge in a sunken pithos (a large partially-submerged storage jar) from the Erymanthian Boar slung over Hercules’ shoulder.  This sarcophagus gives us two Stymphalian Birds, not one, and neither appears to nibble on Hercules’ bow (instead, one appears to be dive-bombing our hero’s shoulder).  And Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen, looks not dead but worrisomely elastic and gumby-like as she spins her head around to look up at her conqueror as he strips her of her girdle.  But taken as a whole, these compositions are almost identical.

Was the carver of the second sarcophagus (today’s piece) simply copying the composition of the first directly?  It seems unlikely.  Some 70 to 80 years separate these two pieces.  And the first would almost surely have been in a private family tomb — i.e., not displayed in some public place where other artists might have seen (and copied) it.

It turns out that these two more-or-less identical pieces are hardly unique in their copy-cat-dom.  Numerous sarcophagi feature the adventures of Orestes, for example, laid out in exactly (or almost exactly) the same way every time.  The same holds for sarcophagi staging the murderous story of Medea, the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, and numerous other myths.  They are our best evidence for what was clearly a widespread practice among Roman sculptors:  the reliance on so-called pattern books, or copy books:  picture books featuring drawings of popular compositions, which carvers could refer to for inspiration as they translated them into stone.  Why bother developing one’s own novel composition — and risk months of wasted labor and material if it failed — when one could simply adopt a well-known composition guaranteed to work?

Something else you’ve doubtless noticed:  the head of the middle Hercules on today's piece — the one shooting the Stymphalian Birds —  looks substantially different from the others.  That’s because it’s a portrait:  a portrait of the deceased man interred within the sarcophagus itself.

It may strike us as odd, to see the portrait head of a rather grumpy looking middle-aged Roman man plopped atop the idealized body of Hercules.  But it was common Roman practice on sarcophagi between roughly 220 and 250 AD.  The Greek mythological imagery on sarcophagi was intended, as a rule, to be applied to the dead Romans buried inside them.  Equipping these mythological characters with portrait features of the deceased was a way to make the metaphorical connection between them emphatic:  it demanded that the viewer read the mortal through the mythic, and the mythic through the mortal.

Which brings us back to the epic saga of facial hair.  Hercules on these sarcophagi begins his labors clean-shaven, and develops a beard along the way.  We noted last time that it was a strategy for rendering, within the static and immobile terms of stone, the passage of time:  a reminder that Hercules’ labors stretched over years.  But now, goaded by the portrait to read this dead Roman in terms of the Greek hero, we realize that this device serves an additional purpose.  It invites the viewer to imagine the entire adult life of the deceased man — from beardless youth to bearded age — as a single lifelong string of glorious labors and deeds, just like Hercules’.  Bombastic?  Absolutely.  But effective.
Comments warmly invited.
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Do my hands look like mushrooms to you?

11/29/2013

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Roman strigillated sarcophagus with portrait of a couple; bucolic scene under clipeus, and philosopher & muse at ends. Third century AD. Rome, Capitoline Museum (inv. MC813).
Strigillated sarcophagus with portrait of a couple; bucolic scene under clipeus, and philosopher & muse at ends. Third century AD. Rome, Capitoline Museum (inv. MC813).
Detail of a Roman strigillated sarcophagus with portrait of a couple; bucolic scene under clipeus, and philosopher & muse at ends. Third century AD. Rome, Capitoline Museum (inv. MC813).
​The portraits of the deceased husband and wife who inhabited this Roman sarcophagus were never finished:  their faces are blank.  That's not very unusual, actually.  What is unusual are the mushroom-like lumps poking out just underneath the busts.  What are those things?
They must be the couple's preliminary and uncarved hands.  But note that while these haven't yet been chiselled, they have been drilled:  the perfectly round drill holes are unmistakable.
This provides insight into the order of operations of a typical Roman workshop.  The drill was used first, for initial indexing (in this case, to index the separation of the fingers).  Only after this did the sculptor plan to turn to the chisel for further differentiation of the digits.  This particular sarcophagus, however, was pressed into service before he had time to complete that next step — ensuring that our dead couple would remain not only faceless, but forever fingerless.
EDIT: I have since been informed that what I took to be uncarved hands are more likely acanthus leaves, for which a handful of other pieces provide precedent. This must surely be right.
Also notable is the vignette directly underneath the central tondo.  It
 shows a marvelous bucolic scene:  a seated shepherd helps a ewe give birth (!).  James Herriot would be proud.  But in a funerary context this motif would have carried extra resonance:  the imminent birth of a lamb stands in counterpoise to the deceased couple directly above, insisting on life's continuity in the face of death.
Comments warmly invited.
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    I hope you, gentle readers, will help make this a collective endeavor.  Should you come across anything new pertaining to Roman sarcophagi — whether a recent article or book addressing them, an exhibition or website featuring them, or an excavation uncovering them — please let me know so I can share it here.


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Mont Allen
Assistant Professor of Classics & Art History
Dept. of Languages, Cultures, & International Trade
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Southern Illinois University
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background:  sarcophagus showing Selene approaching the sleeping Endymion (New York, Metropolitan Museum, inv. 47.100.4a,b)