CIRCA SECOND HALF OF THE 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE FUNERARY ALTAR FOR JULIA SPERATA
CIRCA SECOND HALF OF THE 2ND CENTURY A.D.
25 ½ in. (65 cm.) high

Provenance

From the necropolis outside Porta Salaria in Rome, found by 1894 in a vineyard adjacent to the grounds of Villa Albani.
Private collection, France, acquired 1950s-1970s.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 10 December 2009, lot 47.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Literature

E. Le Blant, 'Une inscription de la villa Albani', Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 38 année, no. 6, 1894, p. 417.
C. Hvelsen (ed.), Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. IV, pt. 4, Berlin, 1902, p. 3394, no. 32883.
A. Stein, 'Bericht über römische Epigraphik (Italien). 1893-1906', Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 144, 1909, p. 198.
L. Wierschowski, Heer und Wirtschaft: das römische Heer der Prinzipatszeit als Wirtschaftsfaktor, Bonn, 1984, p. 71.
J. Pollini, 'Roman Marble Sculpture', in M. Merrony (ed.), Mougins Museum of Classical Art, Mougins, 2011, p. 107, fig. 73.

Exhibited

Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins, 2011 - 2023 (Inv. no. MMoCA465).

Sale Room Notice

Please note this lot will no longer be going to off-site storage post-sale.

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Claudio Corsi Specialist, Head of Department

ccorsi@christies.com +44 (0) 20 7389 2607

Lot Essay

During the Imperial period, funerary monuments such as the present one were placed along the main roads leading to the city gates in the family funerary plot along other monumental tombs. They had the double function of mourning the departed while displaying the family's wealth and status in Roman society.

This funerary altar is carved in front with eleven lines of Latin inscription translating "To the Spirits of the Departed. Gaius Iulius Sabinianus, evocatus augusti, (had this made) for his most pious mother Julia Sperata, for her freedmen and freedwomen, and for their descendants," one side decorated in shallow relief with a patera, the other with an oinochoe, the pedimented lid with palmette acroteria in the corners and carved in front with a bird facing an overturned fruit basket, a shallow rectangular cavity on top of the altar under the removable lid for insertion of the cinerary urn.

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