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A carved marble fragment at Riom (Puy-De-Dôme) and the chronology of the Aquitanian sarcophagi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Extract

The carved marble fragment illustrated in plate IX and in the accompanying drawing (fig. 1) is walled into the right-hand side of the entrance to the museum of Riom, a small town about ten miles north of Clermont-Ferrand, in the department of Puy-de-Dôme. It is labelled ‘Fragment d'un tombeau gallo-romain’; and although nothing further seems to be known either about the circumstances of its discovery or how it came to enter the museum collections, to judge from the other lapidary fragments with which it is displayed there is a strong probability that it was found locally.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1960

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References

page 25 note 1 See Blant, Le, Sarcophages chrétiens de la Gaule, 1886,Google Scholarpassim (hereafter cited as ‘Le Blant’); and the writer's The Sculpture of Visigothic France’, Archacologia, lxxvii (1938), 79128Google Scholar (cited as ‘Ward-Perkins’). Reference numbers to individual sarcophagi refer to the check-list incorporated in the latter article.

page 25 note 2 Ward-Perkins, pp. 98–99.

page 26 note 1 Marseille 2 (p. 88, pl. XXIX, 6) = Le Blant, no. 59, pl. XI, 1, second panel from the right.

page 26 note 2 No. 20, Béziers I = Le Blant, no. 173, pl. LXIII, 1.

page 26 note 3 e.g. the fine examples in the recently discovered Justinianic mosaic at Gasr Lebia in Cyrenaica ( Illustrated London News, 14th Dec. 1957, pp. 1034–5)Google Scholar.

page 27 note 1 Hubert, J., L'Art pré-roman, Paris, 1938, p. 5Google Scholar (with previous bibliography); cf. Ward-Perkins, p. 90, n. 3.

page 27 note 2 No. 39, Clermont-Ferrand = Le Blant, no. 81, pl. XIX, 3; no. 51, Manglieu.

page 27 note 3 Within the Aquitanian series the L-shaped lid is restricted to a local group found in the Toulouse-Rodez area (Ward-Perkins, p. 106). Also characteristic of this group are the use of spirally-fluted columns and the liberal use of figured representatons.

page 27 note 4 Art. cit. (n. 1). The article was frankly exploratory in character.In the matter of chronology, more allowance should certainly have been made for the possibility of continued production by local workshops throughout the sixth century, and possibly even into the seventh.

page 27 note 5 Columnar Sarcophagi in the Latin West’, Art Bulletin, xiv (1932), 103–85;Google Scholar the Sarcophagi of Ravenna, College Art Association of America, 1945.Google Scholar Miss Lawrence has a certain number of additions and corrections to make to the check-list published by the writer (see also the articles cited in nn. 1 and 2, p. 32, and she will certainly go far more deeply than the writer was able to do into the date and affinities of the interesting group of Provençal fifth-century sarcophagi which is one of the principal links between the familiar products of the late-fourth-century West and this Aquitanian school.

page 28 note 1 L' Art pré-roman, Paris, 1938.Google Scholar

page 28 note 2 ‘La Chronologie des sarcophages d'Aquitaine’, Actes du Ve Congrès International d'Archéologie Chrétienne, Vatican City (Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology), 1957, pp. 321–33.Google Scholar

page 28 note 3 Ward-Perkins, no. 87, Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges 1.

page 28 note 4 Ibid., no. 57 = Le Blant, no. 147, pl. xxxv, 1.

page 28 note 5 Ibid., no. 93 = Le Blant, no. 16, pl. IV, 1.

page 28 note 6 Ibid., no. 18 = Le Blant, no. 118.

page 28 note 7 Hubert, , op. cit., p. 5.Google Scholar See also Ward-Perkins, p. 90 and n. 3; Rey, R., Annales du Midi, lxi (1949), 249–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 28 note 8 See Fossard, Denise, ‘Répartition des sarcophages mérovingiens à décor en France’, Études mérovingiennes: Actes des Journées de Poitiers, Paris, 1953, pp. 117–26.Google Scholar

page 28 note 9 Ibid., pl. XIII.

page 29 note 1 Op. cit., introd., § 1, pp. ii, iii.

page 29 note 2 De Gloria Confessorum, cap. 102.

page 29 note 3 Le Blant, no. 14.

page 29 note 4 Ward-Perkins, no. 91, Saint-Guilhem-le-désert, I = Le Blant, no. 143.

page 29 note 5 Even if the traditional attributions are wrong, as they may well be (thereis a second Aquitanian fragment from Saint-Guilhem in the Metropolitan Museum, New York; Ward-Perkins, no. 92), none of these pieces can have reached this remote site before the foundation of the monastery in the ninth century.

page 29 note 6 Cited by Le Blant, p. 119, n. 1.

page 29 note 7 Ward-Perkins, no. 93 = Le Blant, no. 16, pl. IV, 1.

page 30 note 1 Le Blant, no. 15. For Saint Voué, who was a monk in Saint Drausin's foundation of Notre Dame, see Mabillon, , Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, iv. 2, pp. 544–50;Google Scholar also Acta Sanctorum, i (Feb.), 691–3. I owe these references to the kindness of M. Jean Bayet and Mr. Donald Bullough.

page 30 note 2 Papers of the British School at Rome, xviii (1950), 2829.Google Scholar

page 31 note 1 Fossard, Denise, ‘Les Chapiteaux de marbre du VIIe siècle en Gaule’, Cahiers archéologiques, ii (1947), 6985.Google Scholar

page 31 note 2 Ibid., pl. VI, 2, 3.

page 32 note 1 Durliat, Marcel,‘Quelques sarcophages inédits’, Cahiers archéologiques, ix(1957), 2331.Google Scholar

page 32 note 2 Jean Boube, ‘Les sarcophages paléochretiens de Martres-Tolosane’, ibid., pp. 33–72.

page 32 note 3 Ward-Perkins, nos. 52, 53 = Boube, nos. XI, XIII.

page 32 note 4 The latest of a rich series of fourth-century coins from the classical site is one of Valens; the earliest objects from the cemetery are fragments of two Italian or Provençal sarcophagi of Carrara marble.

page 32 note 5 Ward-Perkins; pp. 99, 120 and refs. ad loc.; particularly Lavedan, P., Lizop, R., Sapène, B., ‘Les fouilles de Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (Lugdunum Convenarum)’, Mem. Soc. Arch. du Midi de la France, xvii (1929), 46, 52,Google Scholar describing the excavation of the church, in which were found 30 sarcophagi, all of Pyrenean marble; ‘leur forme est celle d'une auge, à bords le plus souvent évasés, avec un couvercle à double versants tres incline's.… un seul, trouvé en 1913, porte un décor et uneinscription.…’ (= Ward-Perkins no. 87, the sarcophagus of Aemiliana).

page 33 note 1 See p. 32 n. 1.

page 33 note 2 Benoit, F., Sarcophages paléochrétiens d'Arles et de Marseille (Supplément à Gallia, v), 1954, pp. 79.Google Scholar

page 33 note 3 Boube, no XXI. An unpublished Christian sarcophagus (no. III), with a figure in an attitude of prayer barely roughed out, does not belong to the Aquitanian series.

page 33 note 6 e.g. fine silver ware, Arretine pottery, etc.

page 34 note 1 Benoit, loc. cit.