CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

The front panel of this sarcophagus depicts two winged erotes holding an unadorned shield between them, with two couchant felines occupying the space below. One short side of the sarcophagus is incised with two crossed oval shields and spears. For another sarcophagus with a similar front panel, see the example in Rome, Museo Nazionale, no. 283 in G. Koch and H. Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage.

Once in the collection of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, this sarcophagus was acquired by the institution’s eponymous founder from the Massarenti Collection in 1902. Don Marcello Massarenti (1817-1905) was a Vatican officer who assisted Pope Pius IX flee Rome during the short-lived Roman Republic, when the Papal States were overtaken and replaced with a republican government. Massarenti’s large collection of antiquities and Old Master paintings were sold en-bloc to Walters in 1902. E. Bartman remarks (p. 79 in “The New Galleries of Ancient Art at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore,” American Journal of Archaeology 108, no. 1) that the Massarenti Collection “forms a time capsule of late 19th-century collecting in Rome” and that it represented the “most consequential decision” of Walters’ collecting career.