- Museum number
- 1805,0703.130
- Description
-
Front of a Roman sarcophagus, of fine-grained white marble, probably from Carrara; the marriage procession of Bacchus and Ariadne. The chariot of Bacchus and Ariadne is drawn by two centaurs playing a lyre and pipes and guided by a cupid perched on the lyre-player's back. Bacchus, lounging beneath a small parasol, pours wine into a bowl held by a satyr standing at the corner of the sarcophagus. Ariadne plays with a garland slung across the body of Bacchus. Behind the centaurs is a bareheaded woman carrying a liknon filled with fruit, the cover of which has been blown off. A dancing goat-legged Pan has kicked the lid off the cista mystica, releasing the snake. His hand is restored holding pipes. Next to him a dancing satyr, seen from the front, waves a wineskin above his head. He is flanked by a whirling maenad, also shown moving towards the viewer, whose hands, missing in the Renaissance, have been wrongly restored holding a bunch of grapes. The next figure, a dancing satyr, leaning backwards, is new, and probably replaced a satyr seen from the back blowing pipes. Behind him a maenad, shown in profile, runs to the right, holding a thyrsus. A drunken Silenus follows, perched on a donkey and supported by a satyr with his foot on a rock. A satyr carrying a pedum encourages their progress. The movement to the right is broken by a frontal figure of a naked maenad holding a tympanum above her head. A satyr dances towards her from the right. The small child holding grapes is new.
- Production date
- 2ndC (Antonine)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 53.50 centimetres
-
Width: 219.50 centimetres
-
Depth: 64.50 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Walker, Susan, 1990, Catalogue of Roman Sarcophagi in the British Museum:
See also 1805.7-3.125-126 (further fragments belonging to the same sarcophagus).
Smith, III, 301-4 no. 2298; Turcan, 155, 157, 168, 475, 487, T.l, B2. Pl. XII a-b; Matz, ASR, IV.2, 204-7, no. 88; R. O. Rubinstein, BM Yearbook 1 (1976), 103-56; Koch-Sichtermann, 628, 631; Cook, Townley 39, fig. 37; Bober-Rubinstein, 116-9 no. 83.
It is most likely that by the 1420s the sarcophagus was in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.(1) It was probably moved to the nearby garden of the Villa Montalto about 1585. The sober restorations, some of which betray misunderstanding of the theme, are first shown in engravings made by Francois Perrier in 1645.(2) The sarcophagus was purchased from the Villa Montalto in 1786 by Thomas Jenkins.
In the early Renaissance the figures of the sarcophagus were used by artists as models for studies of the human figure in various poses; later the sarcophagus appears to have become part of a canon of ancient works which young artists were encouraged to study. The numerous surviving drawings are important evidence for the state of the sarcophagus before restoration and for the history of the perception and transformation of ancient art in the Renaissance and later periods. These aspects of the sarcophagus have been studied in detail by Matz and Rubinstein.(3) Here follows a brief review of the figures as they now appear.
The chariot of Bacchus and Ariadne is drawn by two centaurs playing a lyre and pipes and guided by a cupid perched on the lyre-player's back (compare Walker no. 19). Bacchus, lounging beneath a small parasol, pours wine into a bowl held by a satyr standing at the corner of the sarcophagus. Ariadne plays with a garland slung across the body of Bacchus. Behind the centaurs is a bareheaded woman carrying a liknon filled with fruit, the cover of which has been blown off. A dancing goat-legged Pan has kicked the lid off the cista mystica, releasing the snake. His hand is restored holding pipes. Next to him a dancing satyr, seen from the front, waves a wineskin above his head. He is flanked by a whirling maenad, also shown moving towards the viewer, whose hands, missing in the Renaissance, have been wrongly restored holding a bunch of grapes. The next figure, a dancing satyr, leaning backwards, is new, and probably replaced a satyr seen from the back blowing pipes.(4) Behind him a maenad, shown in profile, runs to the right, holding a thyrsus. A drunken Silenus follows, perched on a donkey and supported by a satyr with his foot on a rock. A satyr carrying a pedum encourages their progress. The movement to the right is broken by a frontal figure of a naked maenad holding a tympanum above her head. A satyr dances towards her from the right. The small child holding grapes is new.
An engraving by Battista Franco (1549) and a drawing by Battista Naldini (1560) show the figure of a veiled and draped woman, now in the background, in full.(5) Apparently a priestess, she may have been intended as a counterpoint to the woman carrying the liknon, who appears in the corresponding position at the left end of the sarcophagus. The last of the original figures is the satyr carrying an infant on his shoulders. The bunch of grapes tempting the child is partially restored. The panther to his right is unconvincingly restored as an elephant by a sculptor who has misconstrued the scene as the Indian Triumph of Bacchus. Here the sarcophagus was broken up. The two satyrs to the right are new.
The short sides
These, drawn from Hellenistic repertoire, show (left, 1805.7-3.126) the drunken Pan carried towards the procession by two cupids helped by a satyr, and (right, 1805.7-3.125) the flagellation of Pan by two satyrs. While the scene on the left end is evidently directly related to the procession on the front, the compositional relationship of the scene on the right end to that on the front has been destroyed by the restoration of the last two figures on the front. Carved in unusually high relief, the contrasting depictions of Pan tense and in repose were evidently of great interest to Renaissance artists.(6)
The sarcophagus belongs to a group, about a dozen of which are known, depicting the marriage procession of Bacchus and Ariadne; they are the products of metropolitan workshops of the later Hadrianic and Antonine periods.(7) The London sarcophagus is evidently Antonine in date. The sculptor drew extensively on the neo-Attic repertoire as models for the individual figures.
1. Bober-Rubinstein, 117.
2. Rubinstein, 126 fig. 178-9.
3. Matz, ASR, IV.2, 11 no. 88; Rubinstein, passim. To the drawings listed by Bober-Rubinstein add a newly discovered drawing by an unknown artist, found in the archives of the Dept of Greek and Roman Antiquities by Ian Jenkins. See Jenkins, Handlist no. 96 (forthcoming).
4. Rubinstein, 106-7.
5. Eadem, 122, fig. 173; 149 fig. 206.
6. Eadem, 111.
7. Turcan (above) suggests 140-5; Matz (above) suggests 160-70.
-
Cook 2011, nr. 267:
Three fragments of the same sarcophagus: 1805,0703.125; 1805,0703.126; 1805,0703.130 (Sculpture 2298)
‘A bas relief, inserted in a pedestal, representing a Satyr carried by a Faun as a victim to an alter, placed at the foot of a tree; another faun follows, and appears in an action to strike the Satyr. it is part of a sarcophagus, formerly in the Negroni Villa, and is engraved in Guaetani’s Notizie sulle antichita, 1787. two feet 2 Ins long, 18 inches high’ (1805,0703.125: TY 12/3, dining room 18). ‘A bas relief, inserted in a pedestal, representing a drunken Satyr carried by a Faun and two genii; it belonged to ye same sarcophagus, as did the bas relief, mentioned in No. 18, and is the same size’ (1805,0703.126: TY 12/3, dining room 20). ‘A bas relief, the front of a sarcophagus, seven feet, four inches long, representing a Bacchanalian Choral procession, composed of thirty figures of fauns, Satyrs, Sileni, Bacchant nymphs, et cetera, attending Bacchus and Ariadne in their car, drawn by two Centaurs. it was formerly in the Villa Negroni, is engraved by Bartoli in the Admiranda, plate 48, and is described by the Abbaté Guaetano in the Notizzie del Anno 1786, page 70’ (1805,0703.130: TY 12/3, not placed). Townley miscounted the figures: there are 21, including the animals, but not counting Bacchus and Ariadne themselves or the Centaurs.
The sarcophagus has been known since the fifteenth century, when it stood in the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore. It was placed in the Villa Montalto by Pope Sixtus V (1585-90).
When Jenkins announced his purchase of the sculptures in the Villa Negroni (28 September 1785, TY 7/427/1), these three reliefs were among the objects for which Townley immediately enquired the price (21 October, TY 7/427/2). By 12 November, Jenkins had moved the sculptures to his own premises, but could not yet confirm that Townley could have the things he wanted (TY 7/428). A week later, however, he wrote that he thought Townley could have the relief with the triumph of Bacchus and ‘two small’, which presumably referred to the ends of the sarcophagus (TY 7/429). On 27 September 1786, Jenkins sent a list of relies in his possession, including the front of the sarcophagus at £40 and the two ends at £20 for the pair (TY 7/445). An attached note in Townley’s hand records that he replied on 24 October, accepting Jenkins’s prices. Jenkins confirmed the sale on 25 November (TY 7/446), and the reliefs were duly dispatched to Townley in 1787 (TY 7/451, TY 7/452/1). Townley was careful to acquire all three reliefs, which he recognised as belonging to the same sarcophagus (Parlour Catalogue owned by Simon Townley, hall 9), although he did not exhibit them together.
Jenkins wrote to Townley on 28 September 1785 that he had acquired ‘all the Antiquities in the Villa Negroni’ (TY 7/427/1), and over the course of the following year, Townley purchased five items (1805,0703.119; 1805,0703.44; 1805,0703.123; 1805,0703.88; and three pieces of the same sarcophagus 1805,0703.125; 1805,0703.126; 1805,0703.130). Four more (1805,0703.140; 1805,0703.120; 1805,0703.180; 1805,0703.182) were to follow in 1777-8.
Date:
Antonine (Walker).
Drawings:
-1805,0703.125
* Townley drawings 2010,5006.282; 2010,5006.626; and 2010,5006.1877.20;
* Nollekens: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 45, figs. 26-27, no. 15;
* Chambers: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 42-43, figs. 24-25, no. 20.
-1805,0703.126:
* Townley drawing 2010,5006.629; both together in 2010,5006.1877.21;
* Nollekens: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 45, figs. 26-27, no. 12;
* Chambers: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 42-43, figs. 24-25, no. 17;
* Chambers: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 48-49, figs. 30-31, no. 10.
-Rubinstein catalogued 28 drawings elsewhere dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Bibliography:
- 1805,0703.125:
- A. Venuti, Vetera Monumenta Matthaeiorum (Rome, 1779) II, pl. 78, fig. 1;
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808), VI.3;
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 301-4, no. 2298C;
- Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, VIII, 935 s.v. Pan, no.224*.
- 1805,0703.126:
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808), VI.6;
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 301-4, no. 2298B;
- R. Rubinstein, ‘A Drawing of a Bacchic Sarcophagus in the British Museum and Folios from a Renaissance Sketchbook’, Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Paper Museum I. Quaderni Puteani 2 (1992), 69, fig. 2.
-1805,0703.130:
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808), VI.12;
- Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, X, pls. 37-39;
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 301-4, no. 2298;
- R. Rubinstein, ‘A Bacchic sarcophagus in the Renaissance’, The British Museum Yearbook 1 (1976), 103-56, figs. 159-66;
- Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, III, 556 s.v. Dionysos/Bacchus no. 214*;
- P. P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture (London, 1986), 116-9, no. 83, fig. 83 i-iii;
- S. Walker, Catalogue of Roman Sarcophagi in the British Museum. CSIR Great Britain, vol. 2.2 (London, 1990), 24, no. 18 (bibl.), pl. 7;
- R. Rubinstein, ‘A Drawing of a Bacchic Sarcophagus in the British Museum and Folios from a Renaissance Sketchbook’, Cassiano Dal Pozzo's Paper Museum I. Quaderni Puteani 2 (1992), 69, fig.2, and 71, fig. 3.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2000, Mar-Jun, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, L’Idea del Bello. Viaggio per Roma nel Seicento con Giovan Pietro Bellori
2011, Jun-Oct, South Korea, Ulsan Museum, 'Fantastic Creatures'.
2012, Jan-Apr, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 'Fantastic Creatures'
2018 23 Feb – 22 Apr, Nashville, Frist Art Museum, 'Rome; City &Empire'
2018-2019 20 Sep-04 Feb, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, 'Rome; City &Empire'
2021 13 Feb-15 Aug, Belgium, Tongeren, Gallo-Romeins Museum, 'Rome; City & Empire'
2021-2022 25 Sep – 08 Oct, China, Suzhou Museum, 'Rome: City & Empire'
- Condition
- On the front of the sarcophagus, which is joined from four fragments, six figures have been added or replaced; many minor restorations have been made.
- Acquisition date
- 1805
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.130
