GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI (1720-1778), INCORPORATING ANCIENT ELEMENTS, CIRCA 1ST CENTURY B.C.-1ST CENTURY A.D.

Of this object, K.A. Mortimer and C.C. Vermeule (op. cit.) observe: “The Roman Cinerary Chest…in the form of an elaborate piece of furniture with a lion and lioness standing as the long sides, handles, and feet, is a curiosity, an unusual document of ancient and post-classical decorative art…The heads and foreparts of the beasts have been restored, perhaps in northern Italy in the seventeenth century, and the base of the plinth under the front paws has been taken from a Roman tombstone of the first century of the Roman Empire…The original, rectangular cinerary urn was carved in the age of the first Emperor Augustus (27 B.C. to A.D. 14)…The unusual form of this urn depended on designs evolved by Graeco-Roman decorative carvers for sundials, elaborate table-supports, thrones with animals as their arm-rests, and similar sculpted household and garden ensembles found in houses and villas from the Alban Hills to Pompeii and Herculaneum. Perhaps the commissioner ordered this special cinerarium in imitation of one of his favorite [modern] metal or wooden chests…”