tombstone
- Museum number
- 1862,0423.1
- Description
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Stone tombstone of Volusia Faustina and Claudia Catiotu[a]. The slab comprises a rectangular inscription panel surmounted by the portrait busts of two women set side by side in a gable-topped panel, with the left-hand figure (Volusia Faustina) shown as if she stands slightly in front of the other. The surface of the whole is flat, and the busts and inscription are carved in the same plane. There is a difference in workmanship between the draped busts and the heads, which suggests that here, as in so many other instances, individual portrait heads were added to ready-carved busts. The busts are strictly frontal and are cursorily executed. Both women are similarly dressed in a tunic and a mantle which hangs in a heavy fold from the left shoulder but Volusa Faustina also wears a necklace of heavy beads. The heads are more carefully shown and display some variation in the way they face and in their hari-styles. The right-hand figure appears to have shoulder-length straightish hair which is arranged with a central parting, while the other's hair is drawn back from the brow in gentle waves into a loose roll, the ends of which hang down behind her ears. The faces are fairly broad and flat; the eyes are almond-shaped with strongly delineated lids and strands of hair indicated by narrow ridges (CSIR I, 8).
- Production date
- 3rdC
- Dimensions
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Height: 135 centimetres
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Width: 84 centimetres
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Depth: 15 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- '... only one councillor (decurio) of Lincoln is actually known, from this enigmatic tombstone he erected to his wife.... Why this tombstone commemorated two urelated women in unstated. Senecio only tells us that he married a local woman - to judge by her good Roman name, probably descended from a veteran colonist - and remembered her birthday.' (Tomlin 2018, 253)
- Location
- On display (G49/wall)
- Condition
- Lost are the bottom of the inscription panel; a section of the lower right-hand side of the panel below the fourth line of the inscription; the upper right side of the portrait panel, above and to the side of the woman's head; the top of the portrait panel. There are superficial chips and abrasions, particularly to the faces, and there is a crack around the neck of the woman on the right (CSIR I, 8).
- Acquisition date
- 1862
- Acquisition notes
- Found 1859
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1862,0423.1