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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1940.126
Title
Fragment of a Relief
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
sculpture
Date
250-300 CE
Places
Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Asia, Seleukeia Pieria (Syria)
Period
Roman Imperial period, Late
Culture
Roman
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/292064

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Marble
Technique
Carved
Dimensions
6.5" x 16" (object)
10-7/8" x 19.5" (mount)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Seleucia Pieria (Turkey, Hatay). (By 1937-1939), sold [1]; to the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and Its Vicinity, (1935-1939), dispersed; to Fogg Art Museum, 1940.

[1] Richard Stillwell, 1941, "Catalogue of Sculpture," in Antioch-on-the-Orontes III: The Excavations 1937-1939, pp. 123-124, cat. 354 (Find number: Pc479-S621). This object was purchased, rather than excavated, by the expedition and said to come from Seleucia Pieria.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and its Vicinity
Accession Year
1940
Object Number
1940.126
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
102

Fragment of a Relief

Two heads, facing center, are cut off at the neck. The noses are missing and the surfaces are worn.

The bearded head, in front of the strip of two-part molding, is turned to the right. The helmeted head of Athena or Roma-Virtus faces left, toward the man. Part of the man's shoulder seems to remain at the left, and the helmeted female figure may have been raising her arm to pat her helmet, as on the later Cancelleria relief in Rome.

The bearded man, who wears a fillet in his hair, could be a local man of letters, or he could be a representation of the Demos of Seleucia Pieria or Antioch, the latter city usually personified by her famous Tyche of Eutychides seated above the swimming river Orontes. This fragment of a figured panel with architectural molding certainly comes from a civic or commemorative rather than a funerary relief. If the bearded man were a famous private citizen rather than a god (like Asklepios) or a personification (like Boule or Demos), then the panel might have had a mixture of real people and divinities, like the Zoilos frieze at Aphrodisias in Caria or the Late Antique reliefs in the façade of the Temple of Hadrian at Ephesus.

The pair (part of a series) of limestone reliefs dedicated in A.D. 159 by a Palmyrene priest in the Temple of the Gaddé (or Fortunes) of Palmyra and Dura at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, although Palmyrene in style, shows god, heroes, and real people in frontal poses suggestive of what the Antiochene relief-fragment must have looked like when complete (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1976, p. 48, under no. 63). It would be natural that, in the second and third centuries A.D. (save in times of military crisis), Antioch-on-the-Orontes and its port or suburbs would produce the Roman counterparts in marble to what the Palmyrenes created in their special styles in limestone.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

  • Richard Stillwell, ed., Antioch-on-the-Orontes III, The Excavations, 1937-1939, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ, 1941), p. 124, no. 354, pl. 15
  • Walters Art Gallery, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, exh. cat., The Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, MD, 1947), p. 35, no. 75.
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III and Amy Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 114, no. 102

Exhibition History

  • Early Christian and Byzantine Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, 04/24/1947 - 07/01/1947
  • 32Q: 3620 University Study Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 01/23/2019 - 05/13/2019

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu