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Mors in Victoria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

D. E. L. Haynes
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Extract

The relief shown in Plate IA was among those transferred to the Terme Museum from the Villa Ludovisi, where, about 1460, Cassiano Dal Pozzo saw it immured in the wall of a small building to the right of the entrance. Its original provenience is unknown. In his catalogue of the Villa Ludovisi sculpture Schreiber describes it as representing ‘a knight with two at tendants. … On the left a youth walks forward to the 1. He wears a sleeved tunic girt at the waist, and shoes; and carries on his right shoulder a short stave which has been broken off where the relief border is damaged. He is represented almost en face, and turns his head backwards towards the knight. With his left hand he leads by the bridle a richly harnessed horse saddled with a panther-skin. On the horse rides a young (beardless ?) man in short-sleeved tunic and cloak, the latter falling over his left forearm. He is laureate, and holds the horse's rein in his left hand, while the right is raised to the level of his head. … There follows a bearded man wearing tunic and shoes. In his left hand he holds the end of an object slung over his left shoulder (probably a sack …), and in his right hand he lifts up a hemispherical helmet (the left cheek-piece broken off), in the act of placing it on the knight's head.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 15 , November 1939 , pp. 27 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1939

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References

1 Schreiber, T., Die Antiken Bildwerke der Villa Ludovisi, p. 66, no. 36.

2 The object can only be a helmet, and is taken to be one by Paribeni (Le Terme di Diocleziano e il Museo Nazionale Romano, 2nd ed., p. 124), as well as Schreiber. But the form is curious.

3 Op. and loc. cit., no. 199.

4 Lateran Museum no. 977. Benndorf-Schöne, Die Antiken Bildwerke des Lateranensischen Museums, p. 381, no. 545. CIL XIV, 167. The relief was found in 1856 in the Via delle Tombe at Ostia in front of a two-storeyed tomb. Near it lay an inscribed marble slab from the same tomb (CIL XIV, 166). See Atti dell. Pont. Accad., XV, p. lxxxv, and Visconti in Annali dell' Instituto, 1857, p. 304.

5 Monumenti Etruschi, VI, pl. B2, no. I.

6 Ruggiero, Catalogo del Museo Kircheriano, pt. I, p. 24, no. 91. I have to thank the Regia Soprintendenza alle Antichità, Rome, for information about the loss of this relief.

7 This relief, so far as I know, is not mentioned in any of the Louvre catalogues. It is in the Gallerie Mollien, and is said on the label to have come from Monticelli.

8 BSR., Catalogue of the Sculpture in the Conservatori Palace, pl. 79, Tensa 12.

9 I Sarcofagi Cristiani, text p. 18.

10 Körte, I Rilievi delle Urne Etrusche; III, LXX 2 = p. 83, fig. 14. Körte cites four similar examples in sculpture and one in painting.

11 Körte, , op. cit., IIIGoogle Scholar, LXIX 1, LXX 4, LXXI 5, LXXII 7.

12 Körte, , op. cit., IIIGoogle Scholar, LXIX 3, LXXI 6.

13 On this lost popular art see Raoul-Rochette, Peintures antiques inédites, pp. 298 ff., and Rodenwaldt, , ‘Eine spätantike Kunstströmung in Rom,’ RM, 1921–1922, vol. 36, 37, pp. 80 ffGoogle Scholar. An equally long gap occurs in the history of another Etrusco-Roman funeral scene, the last journey by carpentum. On this see Wilpert, ‘L'Ultimo Viaggio nell’ Romana', Arte Sepolcrale, Rendiconti dell. Pont. Accad., III, p. 61Google Scholar.

14 The cursor in the Roman versions may be compared both in type and function to the Angelus Bonus who leads Vibia into the garden of the blessed in the fresco of the tomb of Vincentius (Reinach, Répertoire de Peintures, p. 258, no. 2). He stands between Mercury and Michael.

15 The symbolism of the helmet is confused. On the Trajanic frieze of the Arch of Constantine (Rodenwaldt, Kunst der Antike, p. 602) the emperor appears in battle with head uncovered, while an attendant carries his helmet. From this it seems that the emperor was conceived as being, as it were, a priori victorious; and that the helmet is there because it is a symbol of the imperial victory, but is not worn, because the imperial victory does not depend on arms or armour. (On the invincibility of the emperor see Rodenwaldt, , ‘Der belgrader Kameo,’ JDI 1922, XXXVII, 26 ff.Google Scholar). Another instance of fighting bare headed is provided by the Ludovisi battle sarcophagus, but here it is not an emperor, but a private citizen. And it is in virtue of his death (symbolised by the serpent above his head) and apotheosis that he can claim an invulnerability and invincibility which among the living can be properly predicated of the emperor alone.

For the helmet as one of the imperial insignia cf. those coin-types which substitute a helmet for a laurel-wreath on the sella curulis, e.g. Mattingly, and Sydenham, , Roman Imperial Coins, pl. III, 51Google Scholar.

16 The panther-skin saddle is another attribute with an imperial and funeral connotation (cf. Trajan on the frieze of the Arch of Constantine and the dead hero on the Ludovisi battle sarcophagus).

17 Visconti (Annali dell'Instituto, 1857, p. 304) identifies the seated female figure on the left of the Lateran relief as the Colonia Ostiensis, while Wilpert (I Sarcofagi Cristiani, p. 18) takes her to be the knight's mother, Vibussia. But the ideal type of her head, the flowers in her lap and the basket of flowers held by the attendant behind her identify her certainly as Proserpine.

18 The Compagno tablets. See J. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 585–9 and 668–70.

19 Cum autem mortale hoc induerit immortalitatem, tunc fiet sermo qui scriptus est: Absorpta est mors in victoria.