Mont Allen
  • Home
  • C.V.
    • C.V.
    • Conference Sessions Organized
    • Conference Papers
    • Education
    • Fellowships
    • Invited Lectures
    • Publications
  • Teaching
  • Sarcophagus Memes
    • Sarcophagus Memes (highlights)
    • Sarcophagus Memes (all)
  • Roman Sarcophagus News (blog)
  • Classics & Art History at SIU
    • Classics at SIU
    • Art History at SIU

Shouldering Responsibility for Recutting

12/24/2013

Comments

 
Roman child's clipeus sarcophagus with recut portrait. Third century AD. Rome, Vatican Museums, Galleria Lapidaria (inv. 9242).
Child's clipeus sarcophagus with recut portrait. Third century AD. Rome, Vatican Museums, Galleria Lapidaria (inv. 9242).

The small dimensions of this piece reveal that it was intended for a child.  Given the high rates of infant and juvenile mortality in the ancient world (as in most pre-industrial societies), it is perhaps no surprise that many Roman sarcophagi were carved for children.  The sheer number of such pieces is, nonetheless, poignant.

The portrait was clearly reworked in antiquity itself:  originally intended to depict a young woman or girl, it was recarved to portray a (rather strikingly ugly) boy.


That's not especially unusual:  as we've already seen, recutting of portraits for reuse by other inhabitants was a common practice, and could even involve sex-changes along the way, as here.  What is unusual here is our diminutive subject's off-the-shoulder drapery.  It's so suggestive that one might wonder whether the original figure was meant to show Venus, or rather a woman in the guise of Venus.  But while the occasional Roman matron was indeed portrayed in the costume and pose of the goddess — a form of mythological portraiture — such mythological portraiture, as far as I know, is never found inside the frame of a tondo/medallion (the Romans called it a clipeus, their word for 'shield', because of its round shape).  When Romans equip themselves with the attributes of gods or heroes on sarcophagi, it's always as a full-body figure within a narrative frieze, not a bust isolated within a clipeus.  But without the excuse of mythological trappings, what respectable Roman female would choose commemoration in such sexy garb?  That it features on a child's sarcophagus makes things even more puzzling.

On a different note...  the motif of two fowl pecking the ground under the clipeus was clearly a stock vignette, as this piece shows.

Comments warmly invited.
(Both the Facebook system below, and the traditional comment form, work dandily.)
Comments

    Roman
    Sarcophagus
    News

    A venue for announcing all that's new and noteworthy in the burgeoning field of sarcophagus studies.

    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.


    Categories

    All
    Amazons
    Aphrodisian
    Bucolic
    Carving Technique
    Christian
    Dionysiac
    Discovered / Recovered
    Display Context
    Docimean
    Etruscan
    Gender
    Hercules
    Inscription
    Life And Death
    Lions
    Marine
    Musings On Select Pieces
    Mythology
    New - Article / Chapter
    New - Book / Diss.
    New - Exhibition
    New - Lecture / Paper
    Portraits
    Reuse
    Strigillated

    Archives

    November 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013

    Subscribe

    Picture
    via RSS Feed

    Picture
    via Email

home
curriculum vitae

          conference sessions organized
          conference papers
          education
          fellowships
          invited lectures
          publications

teaching
roman sarcophagus news (blog)
Mont Allen
Assistant Professor of Classics & Art History
Dept. of Languages, Cultures, & International Trade
1000 Faner Drive, MC 4521
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL  62901
+1 (618) 303-6553

email
background:  sarcophagus showing Selene approaching the sleeping Endymion (New York, Metropolitan Museum, inv. 47.100.4a,b)