CIRCA LATE 3RD-EARLY 4TH CENTURY A.D.

細節

A LATE ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS FRAGMENT
CIRCA LATE 3RD-EARLY 4TH CENTURY A.D.
From a Season sarcophagus, preserving a youthful male shouldering a lamb, his left hand holding the animal's left hind hoof, a handled fluted jug in his right hand, wearing a fleece cape over a long-sleeved tunic, his hair a mass of thick curling locks, portions of a figure to the left gripping a brace of fowl, likely ducks, iconography often representing the season Winter, the upper border of the sarcophagus preserved above
19¼ in. (48.9 cm.) high

來源

Acquired at a German auction, 1995.

出版

C. Stiegemann, ed., Byzanz, Das Licht aus dem Osten, Kult und Alltag im Byzantinischen Reich vom 4. bis 15. Jahrhundert, Mainz am Rhein, 2001, no. I.1.

展覽

Paderborn, Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum, Byzanz - Das Licht aus dem Osten, 6 December 2001 - 31 March 2002.

拍品專文

In the context of a Season sarcophagus from the late Roman Period, it is unclear whether this lamb-bearing youth should be interpreted as pagan or Christian. As Early Christian iconography was borne from its pagan fore bearers, its significance and meaning are unchanged in either context. According to McCann (Roman Sarcophagi in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 136), "the Seasons may be seen as symbols of immortality and rebirth." So, too, Carder informs (p. 519 in Weitzmann, ed., The Age of Spirituality, Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century) the bucolic ram-bearing shepherd "acquired a general philanthropic savior symbolism," which "was adopted by the Christians as the Good Shepherd - Christ as the Savior of the Christian flock."

Elsner (Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, p. 154) credits the sarcophagus sculptors, in response to the "the demands of their customers," with "transforming Roman culture beneath their chisels. It is in part due to them ... that a Christian art was able to emerge at all in Rome - entirely out of the forms and themes of its pagan environment." Further, (p. 147, op. cit.), "...for the sculptors ... these Christian subjects may have had no more meaning than any other theme they were paid to create. It was simply another set of myths for a group of cult members little different from the initiates of Dionysus. Christian myths, just like Greek myths, were visualized through the adaptation and combination of a stock set of image-types."