Romans - XL: One Stele and 6 Portraits [L. 1st c. BC]

Funerary relief with six figures: two women and four men. The rightmost woman hair-style is similar to the coiffure of the female portraits dating to the early Augustan empire: last two decades of the first century BC. The small knot (nodus) on the forehead recalls the portraits of Livia in particular.

The long, framed late Republican reliefs from Rome and the Italic towns, with frontal half figures of men and women shown as if they are looking out through a window, almost exclusively commemorate freedmen and their families, as the accompanying inscriptions inform us. The reliefs adorned the outside of tombs just above eye-level and were meant to attract the attention of passers-by.

This can be observed in the three reliefs (about 270 have survived scattered in museums around the world) which remain in situ on the Via Statilia and the Via Appia . These funerary reliefs dating to the second quarter of the first century B.C. are carved – initially in limestone or travertine and later almost exclusively in marble – in a style which attempts to bring them close to the ideals of the free-standing honorific statues and tomb statues of aristocrats of the Late Republic.

The notion of old age as a respected state, as well as a general sense of calmness and dignity, exude from these reliefs. Most of the reliefs show four or more people, often two married couples of two generations and sometimes three, those dead as well as those still living. The juxtaposition of different couples is clearly part of an attempt to create a genealogy similar to what is observed in the tombs of the aristocracy. Sometimes the person who set up the relief may be among those represented in the reliefs.

In the early versions of this genre no children are represented. They make their appearance during the last quarter of the first century B.C. The most important message of the reliefs was to signify the social status of the deceased to a wide audience of passers-by.

 

Source: Jane Fejfer, “Roman Portraits in Context”

 

Funerary stele, Luni marble

Height 58 cm, length 230 cm

Last 2 decades 1st cent. BC

From the rampants of the Flaminia Gate, Rome

Roma, Musei Capitolini, Centrale Montemartini

Done