Object types
sarcophagus (all objects)
Materials
marble (all objects)
Production place
Made in Rome (all objects)
Date
2ndC (Antonine)
Period/Culture
Roman (scope note | all objects)
Description
Front of a Roman sarcophagus, of fine-grained white marble, probably from Carrara; the marriage procession of Bacchus and Ariadne. The chariot of Bacchus and Ariadne is drawn by two centaurs playing a lyre and pipes and guided by a cupid perched on the lyre-player's back. Bacchus, lounging beneath a small parasol, pours wine into a bowl held by a satyr standing at the corner of the sarcophagus. Ariadne plays with a garland slung across the body of Bacchus. Behind the centaurs is a bareheaded woman carrying a liknon filled with fruit, the cover of which has been blown off. A dancing goat-legged Pan has kicked the lid off the cista mystica, releasing the snake. His hand is restored holding pipes. Next to him a dancing satyr, seen from the front, waves a wineskin above his head. He is flanked by a whirling maenad, also shown moving towards the viewer, whose hands, missing in the Renaissance, have been wrongly restored holding a bunch of grapes. The next figure, a dancing satyr, leaning backwards, is new, and probably replaced a satyr seen from the back blowing pipes. Behind him a maenad, shown in profile, runs to the right, holding a thyrsus. A drunken Silenus follows, perched on a donkey and supported by a satyr with his foot on a rock. A satyr carrying a pedum encourages their progress. The movement to the right is broken by a frontal figure of a naked maenad holding a tympanum above her head. A satyr dances towards her from the right. The small child holding grapes is new.
Dimensions
Length: 214.7 centimetres
Height: 48.7 centimetres
Width: 62.5 centimetres
Condition
On the front of the sarcophagus, which is joined from four fragments, six figures have been added or replaced; many minor restorations have been made.
Curator's comments
Walker 1990.
See also 1805.7-3.125-126 (further fragments belonging to the same sarcophagus).
Smith, III, 301-4 no. 2298; Turcan, 155, 157, 168, 475, 487, T.l, B2. Pl. XII a-b; Matz, ASR, IV.2, 204-7, no. 88; R. O. Rubinstein, BM Yearbook 1 (1976), 103-56; Koch-Sichtermann, 628, 631; Cook, Townley 39, fig. 37; Bober-Rubinstein, 116-9 no. 83.
It is most likely that by the 1420s the sarcophagus was in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.(1) It was probably moved to the nearby garden of the Villa Montalto about 1585. The sober restorations, some of which betray misunderstanding of the theme, are first shown in engravings made by Francois Perrier in 1645.(2) The sarcophagus was purchased from the Villa Montalto in 1786 by Thomas Jenkins.
In the early Renaissance the figures of the sarcophagus were used by artists as models for studies of the human figure in various poses; later the sarcophagus appears to have become part of a canon of ancient works which young artists were encouraged to study. The numerous surviving drawings are important evidence for the state of the sarcophagus before restoration and for the history of the perception and transformation of ancient art in the Renaissance and later periods. These aspects of the sarcophagus have been studied in detail by Matz and Rubinstein.(3) Here follows a brief review of the figures as they now appear.
The chariot of Bacchus and Ariadne is drawn by two centaurs playing a lyre and pipes and guided by a cupid perched on the lyre-player's back (compare Walker no. 19). Bacchus, lounging beneath a small parasol, pours wine into a bowl held by a satyr standing at the corner of the sarcophagus. Ariadne plays with a garland slung across the body of Bacchus. Behind the centaurs is a bareheaded woman carrying a liknon filled with fruit, the cover of which has been blown off. A dancing goat-legged Pan has kicked the lid off the cista mystica, releasing the snake. His hand is restored holding pipes. Next to him a dancing satyr, seen from the front, waves a wineskin above his head. He is flanked by a whirling maenad, also shown moving towards the viewer, whose hands, missing in the Renaissance, have been wrongly restored holding a bunch of grapes. The next figure, a dancing satyr, leaning backwards, is new, and probably replaced a satyr seen from the back blowing pipes.(4) Behind him a maenad, shown in profile, runs to the right, holding a thyrsus. A drunken Silenus follows, perched on a donkey and supported by a satyr with his foot on a rock. A satyr carrying a pedum encourages their progress. The movement to the right is broken by a frontal figure of a naked maenad holding a tympanum above her head. A satyr dances towards her from the right. The small child holding grapes is new.
An engraving by Battista Franco (1549) and a drawing by Battista Naldini (1560) show the figure of a veiled and draped woman, now in the background, in full.(5) Apparently a priestess, she may have been intended as a counterpoint to the woman carrying the liknon, who appears in the corresponding position at the left end of the sarcophagus. The last of the original figures is the satyr carrying an infant on his shoulders. The bunch of grapes tempting the child is partially restored. The panther to his right is unconvincingly restored as an elephant by a sculptor who has misconstrued the scene as the Indian Triumph of Bacchus. Here the sarcophagus was broken up. The two satyrs to the right are new.
The short sides
These, drawn from Hellenistic repertoire, show (left, 1805.7-3.126) the drunken Pan carried towards the procession by two cupids helped by a satyr, and (right, 1805.7-3.125) the flagellation of Pan by two satyrs. While the scene on the left end is evidently directly related to the procession on the front, the compositional relationship of the scene on the right end to that on the front has been destroyed by the restoration of the last two figures on the front. Carved in unusually high relief, the contrasting depictions of Pan tense and in repose were evidently of great interest to Renaissance artists.(6)
The sarcophagus belongs to a group, about a dozen of which are known, depicting the marriage procession of Bacchus and Ariadne; they are the products of metropolitan workshops of the later Hadrianic and Antonine periods.(7) The London sarcophagus is evidently Antonine in date. The sculptor drew extensively on the neo-Attic repertoire as models for the individual figures.
1. Bober-Rubinstein, 117.
2. Rubinstein, 126 fig. 178-9.
3. Matz, ASR, IV.2, 11 no. 88; Rubinstein, passim. To the drawings listed by Bober-Rubinstein add a newly discovered drawing by an unknown artist, found in the archives of the Dept of Greek and Roman Antiquities by Ian Jenkins. See Jenkins, Handlist no. 96 (forthcoming).
4. Rubinstein, 106-7.
5. Eadem, 122, fig. 173; 149 fig. 206.
6. Eadem, 111.
7. Turcan (above) suggests 140-5; Matz (above) suggests 160-70.
Department: Greek & Roman Antiquities
Registration number: 1805,0703.130
Greek and Roman Antiquities catalogue number: Sculpture 2298
Bibliographic reference
Sarcophagus 18
Sculpture 2298 (A)
http://www.britishmuseum.org/researc...82&numpages=10
