The intention of this article will be to re-marry the frequently separated themes of commemoration, memory, mourning and status affirmation. As a result the funerary context is overlooked and the function of these portraits as stand-ins for the deceased, the focus of grief and commemoration, requires further exploration (Hope 2011 D’Ambra 1995, 673 Carroll 2006, 30ff.). Their societal function is limited to asserting the status of the depicted. Portrait busts, from funerary contexts, however, are rarely discussed in these terms. Important work has been done on the use of myth in Roman funerary monuments, and of particular relevance here, the use of portraits within Roman mythological sarcophagi not only to assert social status but to channel, aid and express the grief of the mourning family and kin (Newby 2011 & 2014 Koortbojian 2005 Zanker & Ewald 2004). Despite the proclivity of portrait busts in funerary contexts an in-depth discussion of the societal function of these portraits and specifically the significance of the bust format, in the funerary context, is lacking. Even in funerary contexts where busts were inconvenient or where resources prevented the ‘real’ thing, the form of the bust was utilized, this is reflected in the large corpus of funerary reliefs and sarcophagi, which depict portraits in bust format. The portrait bust held a special status in Roman funerary contexts. The aim of this paper will be to understand the role of the portrait bust in Roman practices of mourning.
I argue that their polysemic visual language creates a semantic flexibility that allows – in one and the same sarcophagus image – for shifts in narrative voice, tense, and meaning and requires a dynamic model of spectatorship which is open to change through time.
Pictorial space series#
These findings give rise to a series of further considerations on the prospective functions of mythological sarcophagi. I argue that their images, breaking away from established visual traditions, explore new means of portraying the owners as morituri (destined to die) in an attitude of meditation upon their own future death. Drawing upon the epigraphic formula vivi fecerunt/vivus fecit – »the living made it« – common in Roman freedmen’s epitaphs, I propose a new interpretation for two well-known mythological sarcophagi of Alcestis and Protesilaus in the Vatican Museums as monuments by and for living patrons.
This article explores the ›existentialist‹ mood of Roman patrons who had their tomb monuments erected during their lifetime.
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