AN IMPORTANT ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS

LATE 2ND CENTURY A.D.

細節

AN IMPORTANT ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS
LATE 2ND CENTURY A.D.
From a unique group of sarcophagi made in Rome between 160-200 A.D. in honour of military commanders who had fought against barbarian tribes on the Danube front. The vigorous relief scene is based on a now lost Pergamene painting which showed the Victory of the Pergamenes over the Gauls or Galatae. The central panel shows the victorious cavalry cutting down the trampled and fleeing foe, at either end dejected prisoners sitting under the panoplies of war. At one end, two shields in shallow relief, at the other a circular shield with central Medusa head device; the reverse side flanked by two pilasters in shallow relief
83 (211 cm.) long; 25 in. (63.5 cm.) high; 25 in. (63.5 cm.) deep

來源

Consul General Karl Bergsten (d. 1953); acquired circa 1930.

拍品專文

The scene on this sarcophagus is based on a lost Pergamene painting, possibly by the painter/sculptor, Phyromachos. The painting represented the story of the Defeat of the Gauls at the hands of Attalus I of Pergamon. The Gauls or Galatae were a Celtic tribe, shown here mainly nude and wearing torques and with flowing locks; the poet Callimachus defined them as "the fearless people among the last born of the Titans" (a pun on the word titanos or titanite, the chalky substance with which the Gauls treated their hair). They had moved into Asia Minor around 287-286 B.C. at the behest of King Nicomedes I of Bithynia and, settling in eastern Phyrgia, harassed their neighbours and imposed taxes or hired out their services as mercenaries. They were finally defeated after a series of campaigns begun by Attalus I from 236 B.C. onwards. In the 220s B.C. Attalus erected a huge victory monument to Athena Nikephoros on the Acropolis at Pergamon, in which votive bronzes of the defeated and dying Gauls would have stood. A later similar victory monument was raised on the Acropolis at Athens. These groups are known from inscribed bases, Roman copies and literary references, including Pausanias, Plutarch and Pliny who also names the artists involved, amongst whom is the painter/sculptor Phyromachos. The Pergamene school of art was to have a profound influence on Roman and Western representations of warfare symbolising, as it does on the Bergsten Sarcophagus, the victory of civilised forces over an heroic but barbarian enemy. This Pergamene imagery now survives in Roman copies, not only of the famous series of sculptures of the Dying and Wounded Gaul, but also in the series of 'Battle-scene' sarcophagi made in the late 2nd Century A.D., of which the Bergsten Sarcophagus and the 'Ammendola' Sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum, Rome, are fine examples. These sarcophagi were made in honour of Roman military commanders who were then fighting the Germani along the Danube; thus the iconography of the earlier Pergamene battles was altered to fit the late 2nd Century A.D. context.

Cf. B. Andreae, "The Image of the Celts in Etruscan, Greek and Roman Art", especially p. 69 in S. Moscati (ed.) et al., The Celts, Venice, 1991, pp. 61-71, "...there is no doubt that these sarcophagi once more evoke the strength and courage of the Celtic warriors who had made the ancient world hold its breath from the Po Valley to Rome, from the Danube to Delphi, as far as Pergamum and even Egypt."

For a discussion of the 'Battle-scene' sarcophagi, particularly the 'Ammendola' sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum, with which the Bergsten sarcophagus can be closely paralleled, see G. Koch, Sarkophage der Römischen Kaiserzeit, Darmstadt, 1993, p. 67, pl. 37; also illustrated, N. H. and A. Ramage, Roman Art, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 226-227, pl. 8.27.