Columnar Sarcophagus with Apollo and the Muses, front

Roman art

This relief, originally the front of a sarcophagus, is of unknown provenance and was walled into the east facade of the Palazzina, known as the Prospettiva, along with the back of the same sarcophagus. It was then moved to the lake enclosure and, finally, restored by Antonio D’Este in 1827 and installed, with the back, on two facing walls in Room I. Six twisted columns with Corinthian capitals divide the space into five compartments, filled with Apollo and four of the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory). From the left, we find Calliope, Muse of the epic, followed by Euterpe, with a belt decorated with racemes and her distinctive double flute. Apollo Musagetes (leader of the Muses) is in the middle, followed by Thalia, Muse of comic poetry and agriculture, and Melpomene, Muse of tragedy. The iconographic theme of the Muses, developed in Greece in the Classical period, came to the Roman world through new Hellenistic formulations. It was particularly popular in Rome for sarcophagi, of which there are more than 300 known examples.

Object details

Commentary

This relief, which was originally the front of a sarcophagus, is of unknown provenance and was walled into the east facade of the Palazzina, known as the Prospettiva, along with the back of the same sarcophagus, as noted by Manilli and Montelatici. Both reliefs were later moved to the lake enclosure, where they were inserted into the wall near the Grotto of the Lions, as documented in a drawing by Charles Percier (1786–1791) in the library of the Institut de France, Paris, where it remained until the sale of antiquities to Napoleon. At that point, the panels were detached, but only the short sides of the sarcophagus, decorated with the door to Hades and Homer between personifications of the Iliad and the Odyssey, were sent to Paris. For the new installation of the collection in the Casino of the Villa Pinciana, the reliefs were removed from the enclosure and restored by Antonio D’Este, after which they were hung on two facing walls in Room I.

The sarcophagus is one of the oldest examples of the columnar type, which came from Asia. Six twisted columns with Corinthian capitals divide the space into five compartments, each of which with a half-dome in the shape of a shell. The compartment in the middle is topped with an open tympanum, and the two on the far sides with depressed arches.  A rich cornice with Lesbian cymae, ovules and dentils and plant motifs unifies the architectural framework, alluding to the scaenae frons of Roman theatres.

Analysis of the iconographic types and attributes allows us to identify Apollo and four of the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (goddess of Memory), divine singers who brought cheer to the assembly of the gods with their music and were evoked by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. From the left, we find Calliope, Muse of the epic, with a volumen in her hand, followed by Euterpe, with a belt decorated with racemes and her distinctive double flute. Apollo Musagetes (leader of the Muses) is in the middle, with his attribute, the cithara. The next figure is Thalia, to whom the sources attribute the spheres of comic poetry and agriculture. She holds the comic mask in her right hand and a curved stick called a pedum in her left. Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, is next, holding a mask with snake-hair in her left hand and a club, replaced with a gladius by a restorer, in her lowered right hand.

The iconographic theme of the Muses, developed in Greece in the Classical period, came to the Roman world through new Hellenistic formulations. It was especially popular in Rome for decorative painting, mosaic, sculpture cycles for public and private spaces and, starting in the middle of the second century CE, on sarcophagi as well. The Musensarkophage comprise a vast class of funerary monuments that were extremely popular among patrons in metropolitan Rome. More than 300 survive, divided between strigilated, frieze and columnar sarcophagi (Teatini 2011). The current panel was, in fact, part of a columnar sarcophagus, a well-known type that was produced in Asia Minor and is thought to have flourished in Docimium for about a century, between 170 and 260/270 CE, due to the fine quality of the white marble and skill of the local carvers. It was in great demand especially in Rome (Wiegartz 1965; Koch 2011; on the popularity of the type among the elite during the Antonine period, see Thomas 2011).

In the present example, the canonical choros of Muses is complete and expanded to include the figure of Apollo, the presence of whom is frequently attested starting in the last two decades of the second century CE, usually in association with Athena (see Germoni 2010; Teatini 2011, pp.119–129, no. 25).

Analysis of the formal and technical language, including heavy use of the drill to create chiaroscuro effects, dates the Borghese sarcophagus to the second quarter of the third century.

Jessica Clementi