Life, Death and Representation (Millennium-Studien / Millennium Studies)

Discussion of the dig is ibid 13 — Introduction 7 after the original find of , of which 5 still exist. Yet not only are there hardly any studies of such integrated contexts — either in their original form or as developments over time — but the job is in fact difficult for the archaeological reasons laid out in my lament about the group of sarcophagi now mainly in Baltimore. There is the further issue that sarcophagi place dec- oration on the exterior of the coffin space, protecting or encasing the dead as it were with imagery designed to be viewed by the living, while the spaces con- taining sarcophagi — mausolea or cubicula — are decorated on their interiors, with a range of painted imagery that itself encases a viewer, that plays with or against the sarcophagi within them, and that relates as a flat pictorial field to the carved relief surface of the sarcophagi.

Questions of the apotropaic function of imagery, of whether sarcophagus decoration was for the edification of the dead in their tomb-houses or for the living who occasionally visited them to mourn and remember, of whether imagery — like the representation of garlands and other offerings — might function as a replacement for or a perpetual perfor- mance of funerary ritual,29 would all be profoundly advanced if we had more by way of context.

It is also profoundly limited — at any rate for sarcophagi — because with the best will in the world it can never be applicable to more than a few hundred sarcophagi at most and many of these in only the vaguest terms out of the thousands that survive. Riegl , 71 — The obsession with stylistic change Stilwandel became the driving force in the work of the giants of twentieth century Roman art history including Gerhard Rodenwaldt and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli: For this topic as late as the s, see Jung For a recent discussion of formal and iconographic changes, and also the move to pre-Con- stantinian Christian sarcophagi, see Zanker and Ewald , — Koch and Sichtermann , 88 — ; Wrede Pagan — Koch and Sichtermann also Koch a ; Christian: Note the way that the edited volumes of the Sarkophag-Studien series e.

Koch and ; also Koch b , systematically exclude Christian material although Koch has a short piece on Jewish ossuaries and Koch b has a piece on a relief from a sarcophagus from Constantinople which is necessarily Christian , yet Koch himself is perhaps the foremost expert on Christian sarcophagi; the same observation may be made of the early Christian side of the field: Koch , and Bisconti and Brandenburg , contain hardly any non-Christian material. One exception to this obsessive divisionalisation is when the scholarly focus is on the extant remains in a given province or region: At the same time, insofar as some Christian patrons may have partaken of a different eschatology, and hence a different view of life and death, from other Romans, one can see that different ways of viewing and patron-relations to the finished object are potentially at play in Christian iconographies.

This however is a subtle nuance within what ought to be one field; but the divide of sarcophagus studies into two different fields is fundamental to the history and evolution of disciplines, including the differentiation of secular subjects from theology in the early modern period. It is not so easily overcome. Clearly there are many sarcophagi with Old Testament themes used in a Christian context. There are a few which may be seen as made for Jews or re-used by them with specifically Jewish imagery like the menorah: What is not clear is whether any of the sarcophagi we think of as Christian might have also been used by Jewish patrons or perceived as inoffensive by Jewish viewers.

We are left with classicism and culture as a prime factor when we look at these representations [on sarcophagi] or at a grave altar with the tale of Pasiphae. They mean no more than do the garland sarcophagi and it matters not whether the garlands hang by themselves or are carried by Erotes.

Literary classicism is the predominant factor, but there was also a similar feeling towards many art works of the great past.

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• Life, Death and Representation.

In spite of local variations there is massive unity in this sepulchral art; but is it not a unity of cultural inheritance and to some extent of feeling rather than a unity of belief? His thinking may be better placed in the context of Belgian symbolism and pre- World War I mysticism, which included a strong tradition of Freemasonry in Belgium. For an interesting account of Cumont and Nock in relation to epiphanic sarcophagi, see Platt, forthcoming, chapter 8.

Supplementary Information

Brilliant , — 65; Giuliani ; Blome ; Zanker Zanker , and Zanker Ewald ; Borg b, — Introduction 11 restrictive,45 as if some questions of belief and the search for meaning after death were not in play for at least some viewers and users of sarcophagi in antiquity. They have for too long remained in a scripturally-determined ghetto of iconographic and typological description.

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• Life, death and representation : some new work on Roman sarcophagi.

It is only relatively recently that religion has been integrated into this cultural mix in e. Egelhaaf-Gaiser ; Galli and ; the essays in the third part of Cardovana and Galli Many iconographic categories of Roman mythological sarcophagi — by far the most popular for scholarly discussion — remain without a fundamental catalogue: The current volume, born from a conference at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, represents a series of new essays in English. It makes no claims and has no pretensions to do more than sketch some dimensions in which the gaps might be filled and the field might develop.

We see the totality of Roman sarcophagus production and receptions from Asia to Spain as part of a wide and complex phenomenon — differently motivated and enacted in different contexts, to be sure. The book opens with a chapter by Glenys Davies that assesses the inception of sarcophagi and their relation to funerary urns and ash chests.

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This is followed by four chapters that stress different aspects of the big picture within which Roman sarcophagi must be placed. It has been radically reduced in the last 10 years — see now http: Korkut , dis- cusses garland ossuaries in limestone from Pamphylia and Cilicia. On some aspects of Phrygian sarcophagi, see Strocka Francisco Prado-Vilar, beginning with a specific instance of medieval appropriations of a striking iconography on a particular sarcophagus, traces aspects of that long story in the history of art itself — thinking especially about the tradition of Aby Warburg.

Frances van Keuren and her collaborators offer new scientific analyses and resulting reflections on where the marble comes from — issues that stress wide movement of marbles from different provenances and raise questions about the extent of the use of spolia reused blocks of stone recycled from some earlier function in the making of sarcophagi in late antiquity. Ben Russell takes a fresh synoptic look at the economics of production, trade and the sarcophagus market.

The volume then turns to three groups of studies that home in more directly on the iconographic and detailed art-historical study of objects. The first group deals with questions of portraiture, gender and identity. In the spirit of giving a fresh outing to some old and perennial themes, Zahra Newby undertakes a new exploration of the significance of portrait heads within sarcophagi with my- thological subjects. The second group pairs two essays that give deep readings of individual objects. Katharina Lorenz confronts the problem of how to read the mythological material and how its visual representations may respond to the actualities of mourning in which the sarcophagus itself was a centre piece by focusing on the great Borghese sarcophagus with the theme of Meleager that is now in Paris.

Dennis Trout examines the remarkable Christian sarcophagus of Bassa from the Praetextatus catacomb in Rome with its long poetic inscription, to explore the ways mourning and identity were constructed in the Christian fourth century. Our final group pairs two chapters that explore frameworks and categories across multiple examples of sarcophagi. Sarcophagi are our richest single source of Roman iconography — translating the realms of Greek and Roman myth, the subjects of Roman public art, some themes of spiritual or directly religious content into images that were designed to resonate in the most personal and intense of private contexts, when a family mourned for its deceased.

We cannot know how often the tombs, in which sarcophagi were kept, were opened and for whom — but their showing was clearly ritualised, exceptional, candle- or lamp-lit and special in every way like the later ostentiones of relics or icons in Christian culture. The patterning and arrangement of visual narratives, the replication but also differentiation of si- milar imagery, the wide distribution of marble types and of finished examples from workshops based in urban centres — all this goes to the heart of a series of key issues in Roman artistic production.

Moreover, although some sarcophagi were clearly purchased by the very highest echelons of the Roman aristocracy witness the items in the Licinian tomb or the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, who was city prefect when he died in , many surviving examples take us somewhat deeper down the social pyramid into the world of wealthy freedmen and the more aspiring middle classes. Their visual negotiation of the ideals, realities and fantasies of Roman people, both the deceased and their mourners, at the interface of the public and the personal where death is marked and the rites of burial performed, makes them of quite exceptional importance for understanding Roman culture.

Introduction 15 University for its financial support.

We thank the Charles Oldham fund in Corpus for help towards indexing and copy-editing. We are most grateful to Barbara Borg for facilitating our collaboration with the Millennium Supple- ments series and to Sabine Vogt and Sabina Dabrowski at De Gruyter for their efficient command of all aspects of publication. Above all, we thank Emma- Jayne Graham for the enthusiastic help she has given us in copy-editing, commenting on and indexing the volume.

Architektur und Ornamentik der antiken Sarkophage Berlin, Andreae Marburg, b , — Camposanto monumentale di Pisa Pisa, Tomb Portraits under the Roman Empire: Local Contexts and Cultural Styles. Perspective 1 , 38 — Bulletin monu- mental 94 , — Rediscovering the Licinian Tomb. Ein Versuch zu Betrachter. Sarcofagi tardoantichi, paleocristiani e altome- dievali: Alkestis-, Protesilaos- und Proserpinasarkophage. Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 10 , — Exlude Out of Stock. Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Buddhist Poems of Insight and Awakening.

Life, Death And Representation: Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire. Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture Ja? Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture. Economy, Society and Culture. Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, The Art of the Roman Empire: AD Oxford History of Art: Life, Death and Representation: Check out the top books of the year on our page Best Books of Product details Format Hardback pages Dimensions x x Looking for beautiful books?

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