Sarcophagus decorated with festoons and Nereids carrying Achilles’ weapons; section of the front
This relief was originally the middle portion of a sarcophagus front. The right and left sections of the sarcophagus are also preserved (Room VIII, CCXXVII, CCXXXVII), as are the short sides (Salone, XXXV, XXXVII). The lower part of the panel is decorated with a garland of fruit and flowers, while the lunette contains a Nereid, one of the sea nymph daughters of Nereus and Doris, reclining on a dolphin and holding Achilles’ cuirass in her hand. The subject is drawn from Homer’s Iliad, specifically the episode in which Achilles’s mother, Thetis, and her sisters, the Nereids, give the him weapons, an episode that was very popular in particular on pottery from Greece and Magna Graecia.
This iconographic type is part of a group of sarcophagi decorated with garlands that were produced between the first and fourth centuries CE and were especially popular during the Hadrianic and Antonine periods. The marine procession (an allusion to the bliss of the afterworld) represented in the lunette was one of the most popular themes in Roman funerary sculpture.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Medium
white marble with blue veining
Dimensions
height 52 cm, width 60 cm
Provenance
Borghese Collection (before 1671)?; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese, 1833, C., p. 43, no. 31. Purchased by the Italian State, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
Commentary
This sarcophagus fragment, set on a non-ancient base, is decorated with a large, symmetrical festoon hung from two cuff-like elements on the sides followed by grape leaves bookending a string of bunches of grapes, pomegranates, apples, pinecones, corymbs, berries and other generic fruit. In the lunette created by the garland, a Nereid is riding a dolphin, her face turned to the right and holding the edge of her mantle in her outstretched right hand and a cuirass in her left.
The scene was originally the middle portion of a sarcophagus front, the other parts of which are displayed in Room VIII (CCXXXVII and CCXXVII). It depicts the episode in Homer of the Nereids delivering weapons to Achilles. The two short sides from the same sarcophagus are also on view in the Salone (XXXV; XXXVII) and used as statue bases.
The composition and movement of the drapery are similar to those of a Nereid with the cuirass of Achilles on a sarcophagus in the Vatican (Vatican Museums, inv. 874; Spinola 1996, p. 78, PO 11).
The original model is to be sought in a popular late-Classical and Hellenistic image of the marine thiasos. The figure of a Nereid reclining with her legs crossed, riding a dolphin, is found in many variants. This initially generic motif later became very popular as a representation of the myth of Thetis and the Nereids delivering weapons to Achilles (Sena Chiesa 2020).
The relief is part of a large group of sarcophagi decorated with sea creatures and produced for Roman clients over a long period stretching from the late Hadrianic period to the late fourth century. The popularity of marine subjects on funerary monuments can be explained by the very nature of the imagery, which is especially suited to symmetrical, decorative compositions, and the value of the theme in the funerary context, as a clear reference to the bliss and peace of the afterworld (Engelmann 1973, pp. 60–65; Guj 2010; Parodo 2018).
Jessica Clementi
Bibliography
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- A. Rumpf, Die Meerwesen auf den antiken Sarkophagreliefs, Die antiken Sarkophagreliefs V, 1, Berlin 1939, p. 1, n. 1, tavv. 1-2.
- R. Calza, Catalogo del Gabinetto fotografico Nazionale, Galleria Borghese, Collezione degli oggetti antichi, Roma 1957, p. 17, n. 184.
- J. Engemann, Untersuchungen zur Sepulkralsymbolik der späteren römischen Kaiserzeit, Münster 1973, pp. 60-65.
- P. Moreno, Museo e Galleria Borghese, La collezione archeologica, Roma 1980, p. 9.
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- G. Koch, H. Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage, Munchen 1982, p. 233 n. 62.
- H. Herdejürgen, Stadtrömische und italische Girlandensarkophage, 1. Die Sarkophage des 1 . und 2. Jahrhunderts. Die antiken Sarkophagreliefs, VI, 2, 1, Berlin 1996, p. 122, n. 70, tav. 37, 1-2; 40, 1; 43, 1-2.
- G. Spinola, Il Museo Pio Clementino, I, Roma 1996, p. 78, PO 11.
- H. Herdejürgen, Antike und moderne Reliefs in der Villa Borghese, in “Archäologischen Anzeiger”, 4, 1997, pp. 480-503, in part. p. 491.
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- C. Parodo, La morte per acqua. Iconografia di un thiasos marino su un frammento di sarcofago inedito del Museo Civico “Giovanni Marongiu”, Cabras (OR), in “Layers” 3, 2018, pp. 1-20.
- G. Sena Chiesa, La nereide-menade: i sentieri delle immagini, in C. Lambrugo (a cura di), Στην υγειά μας. Studi in omaggio a Giorgio Bejor, Sesto Fiorentino 2020, pp. 13-20.
- Scheda di catalogo 12/01008336, P. Moreno 1976; aggiornamento G. Ciccarello 2021
