Sarcophagus with Erotes Holding a Clipeus

Roman art

This sarcophagus, of unknown provenance, is decorated on the front with a smooth central clipeus held up on either side by two cornucopias and a pair of plump flying Erotes. The Erotes’ arms are outstretched, their legs spread and their soft faces are framed by curls. Below the central motif, there are two calyx craters tipped on their sides and spilling out fruit and, to the sides, a quiver on the left and a bow on the right. The Borghese sarcophagus also preserves its lid, which is decorated with garlands held up by flying Erotes and acroterial Dionysian masks, a subject with eschatological meaning that was especially popular starting at the end of the Hadrianic period.

The decorative motif on the front of the sarcophagus was very popular in Roman workshops, as attested by the numerous surviving metropolitan sarcophagi with Erotes or Victories holding up a clipeus or a panel with a dedicatory inscription, dating between the Antonine period and the third century CE.

Object details

Commentary

This rectangular sarcophagus is small in size, indicating that it was made for someone who died before adulthood. It is of unknown provenance and was moved to the Portico when the collection was installed in the Casino di Villa Pinciana in the nineteenth century, where it was displayed as a pendant to a sarcophagus with a similar subject and used as a base for a sleeping nymph.

Decorated on the front between two smooth, projecting listels, it has a central clipeus held up by two cornucopias and a pair of plump, flying Erotes in mirror image. The Erotes’ arms are outstretched, their legs spread and their soft faces are frames by curls. Below the central motif, there are two tipped-over calyx craters spilling out fruit and, to the sides, a quiver on the left and a bow on the right.

The clipeusmotiv decorating the Borghese sarcophagus is understood to have originated in Asia Minor (Rodenwaldt 1943, p. 13). It was extremely successful in Roman workshops, as attested by the numerous sarcophagi with symmetrically arranged flying or standing Erotes, sometimes substituted with Victories, holding up either an anephigraphic clipeus, a portrait bust of the deceased or a tabula with a dedicatory inscription, dated between the Antonine period and the third century CE (Koch, Sichermann 1982, pp. 238–241; Blanc, Gury 1986, pp. 982–983; Avagliano, Papini 2015, pp. 222–223, no. 61). The bow and quiver, which are thought to refer to Apollo and Artemides, are also found, along with baskets of fruit and in close proximity to the clipeus, in other examples, especially children’s sarcophagi (see Sapelli 1988, pp. 213–215, no. 225; Micheli 1985, pp. 250–252, no. V, 15; Teatini 2011, pp. 230–234, no. 48, figs. 217-218; Avagliano 2015, pp. 201–203, no. 52).

The Borghese sarcophagus also preserves its lid, which is decorated with garlands held up by flying Erotes and acroterial Dionysian masks, a motif with eschatological meaning that was used for sarcophagus lids starting at the end of the Hadrianic period. In the area of lid decoration, the iconography of Erotes holding up garlands, without masks, is also found on the lid of a Dionysian sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum (Matz 1969, 3, no. 200, pls 214, 215a; on the garland-bearing putto, see Stuveras 1969, pp. 71–74).

Turning to technique and style, the imagery on the Borghese sarcophagus is not carved in especially high relief and a drill was used for the hair, enlivening it with small holes. The rough, simplified rendering of the Erotes is very similar to that of the sarcophagus of Postumia Paula Leonica in the Museo Nazionale Romano (inv. 115248; Micheli 1985), suggesting the same date of the first two decades of the third century CE.

Jessica Clementi