8.26.14 Els Ner Framing Objects

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Framing the Objects We Study: Three Boxes from Late Roman Italy Author(s): Jaś Elsner Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 71 (2008), pp. 21-38Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20462774Accessed: 19-08-2014 04:56 UTC

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FRAMING THE OBJECTS WE STUDY:

THREE BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY

J7as Elsner

J am going to compare three boxes of different materials made in Italy between the mid- and late fourth century AD. The aim of the enterprise may seem a

traditional art-historical venture into close analysis of a group of related objects from a single culture and with a relatively coherent set of dates. But my aim is to test the pervading assumptions of historical coherence and framing that dominate interpretations in the discipline of art history, since I have chosen a point of cardi nal cultural change-the transition from pagan to Christian culture-at which so much of what we (want to) assume, of what we want the evidence to reveal, lies in the eye of the beholder, the interpretative starting point of the historian. None of my objects has external documentary evidence that would help in the process of interpretation, so we are reduced to those fundamental tools of the art-historical discipline: close observation of form, iconography, and inscriptions on the objects themselves, combined with whatever integrative contextual frames we may wish to apply, borrowed from a sense of the 'bigger picture' extrinsic to the objects them selves. The underlying problem, I trust, will seem relevant beyond the relatively recondite field of late antique material culture.

All three boxes are lavishly decorated, and their adornment functions to frame the containers as objects as well as their contents. Moreover, within the visual discourse constructed by the iconography, various kinds of formal and thematic framing can be seen to operate. Effectively, we have in all three boxes a variety of forms of framing in play. Each box is itself a three-dimensional frame, a container for something, which is kept inside the box. The decoration's primary function is to validate through imagery the box's contents, whose importance might be said to be primary, but which would not be identifiable without the framing iconography's intense, even excessive, visual scene-setting, coupled (in two cases of the three) with some interesting inscriptions.' In effect, the iconographic and formal choices made in the framing of my objects may serve as a material commentary on the art historical practice of framing the works of art we discuss in a given historical or cultural context. The relationship of that context to the specific examples we discuss in detail, and the ways we construct what is constitutive and meaningful about the context, are issues in my view insufficiently addressed or worried about in the broader discipline of art history as practised today.

I. J. Eisner, Art and the Roman Viewer. The Trans

formation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity,

Cambridge 1995, pp. 283-84.

2I

JOURNAL OFTHE WARBURG AND COURTAULD INSTITUTES, LXXI, 2008



22 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY

_ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'

i. Vatican City, Museo Petriano, Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, marble, dated by inscription to 359 AD, front

and remains of the lid (Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)

The three boxes in question are as follows. First, we have the marble sarco phagus of Junius Bassus (243 X I44 X I4I cm high, excluding the lid, which is frag mentary but has a height of 40 cm even in its current state, suggesting an original total height of as much as 200 cm) (Figs I-3). It was used (and, we may guess, was specially commissioned) to enclose the body of the city prefect of Rome, who died, according to the inscription on the upper rim of the coffin's main body, on the eighth day from the kalends of September (25 August 359), when Eusebius and Hypatius were consuls.2 It was either made in that year or just before. It is undoubt edly one of the most impressive and accomplished items of mid-fourth-century production, made for a patron at the highest pinnacle of the elite. The second box is the so-called 'Lipsanotheca' from Brescia, an exquisitely carved ivory casket, probably made in northern Italy and most commonly dated to the 380S AD (32 X 22 X 25 cm high) (Figs 4-5).3 Again, this is a spectacular work of very high quality.

2. 'IVN. BASSVS V. C. QVI VIXIT ANNIS

XLII MEN. II IN IPSA PRAEFECTVRA VRBI NEOFITVS IIT AD DEVM VIII KAL. SEPT. EVSEBIO ETYPATIO COSS.' See E. S. Malbon, The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, Princeton 1990, p. 4. See also A. de Waal, Der Sarko

phag des Junius Bassus, Rome 1900; F. Gerke, Der

Sarkophag des Junius Bassus, Berlin 1936; K. Schefold,

'Altchristliche Bilderzyklen: Bassussarkophag und

Santa Maria Maggiore', Rivista diArcheologia Cristiana, xvi, 1939, pp. 291-98; G. Bovini and H. Brandenburg,

Repertorium der Christlich-Antiken Sarkophage I. Rom

und Ostia, Wiesbaden 1967, no. 680, pp. 279-83; J. Gaertner, 'Zur Deutung des Junius-Bassus-Sarko

phages', Jahrbuch des Deutschen Arch?ologischen Insti

tuts, Lxxxiii, 1968, pp. 240-64.



JAS ELSNER 23

2. Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, left side (after Gerke, Der Sarkop hag des Iunius Bassus, I1936)

3. Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, right side (after Gerke, Der Sarkophag des Iunius Bassus, I936)




Its function is uncertain, but it is likely to have been either a reliquary (in which case it may belong to the very earliest phase of the cult of relics, which is particu larly associated with Ambrose, bishop of Milan 374-97, and Damasus of Rome, Pope 366-84),4 or a pyxis (that is to say a container for the blessed Eucharist). The third box is the Projecta Casket (56 x 43 X 27 cm high, Figs 6-8) from the Esqui line Treasure, a collection of over sixty items of silverware found in Rome in the late eighteenth century, and probably made there in the mid- to late fourth century (dates have varied from the 330s to about 380).5 This box is made of silver with some gilding, and was clearly valuable, but does not sit at quite the same elevated level of aristocratic or ecclesiastical patronage as the Bassus sarcophagus or the Brescia Lipsanotheca.6 However, it is decoratively as rich as they are, and the inscription on the upper rim of its lid (if it is original to the object) implies that it celebrates the marriage (possibly the wedding) of its Christian owners, Secundus and Projecta.7

The three boxes represent three different spheres of experience, with very different functions. The Bassus sarcophagus is the grandest surviving funerary object produced in fourth-century Rome, made for the burial of the city's leading citizen in the vicinity of the tomb of St Peter himself, near which it was discovered in the late sixteenth century.8 The Brescia Lipsanotheca, whether its intended contents were relics or the consecrated host, is effectively a liturgical object, a container of sanctified matter to be used in a context of worship rather than burial. The Projecta Casket, from the domestic sphere of a Roman elite household, seems to have held toiletries or bathing materials, and is likely to have been primarily for the use of women.9 Yet all three boxes show a parallel concern for the visual

3- C. B. Tkacz, The Key to the Brescia Casket, Notre Dame 2002, p. 19, nn. 1 and 2.The fundamen

tal literature on the Brescia Casket also includes J. Kollwitz, Die Lipsanothek von Brescia, Berlin r933; R.

Delbrueck, Probleme der Lipsanothek in Brescia, Bonn

1952; W F. Volbach, Fr?hchristliche Kunst, Munich

1958, p. 61 and pis 85-89 (still the best published

plates); W F. Volbach, Elfenarbeiten der Sp?tantike und

des fr?hen Mittelalters, Mainz 1976, no. 107, pp. 77-78; and C.Watson, 'The program of the Brescia Casket',

Gesta, xx, 1981, pp. 283-98. 4. On Damasus, see C. Pietri, Roma Cristiana, 2

vols, Rome 1976, 1, pp. 514-51 and 595-624, and J.

Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital. Rome in the

Fourth Century, Oxford 2000, pp. 142-57. On Ambrose, see E. Dassmann, 'Ambrosius und die M?rtyrer', Jahr buch f?r Antike und Christentum, xvm, 1975, pp. 49-68; and N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, Berkeley and Los

Angeles 1994, pp. 209-17, 226-36, and 347-60. For some thoughts on reliquary caskets, see G. Thuno,

Image and Relic. Meditating the Sacred in Early Medieval

Rome, Rome 2002, pp. 53-118.

5. For c. 330-70, see K. J. Shelton, The Esquiline Treasure, London 1981, pp. 47-55; and J. Eisner,

'Visualising Woman in Late Antique Rome: the Case

of the Projecta Casket', in Through a Glass Brightly.

Festschrift for David Buckton, ed. C. Entwistle, Oxford

2003, pp. 22-36 (22); for c. 380, see E.Will, 'A propos du Coffret de Projecta', in Mosa?que. Recueil d'hom

mages ? Henri Stem, Paris 1983, pp. 345-48 (347); A.

Cameron, 'The Date and Owners of the Esquiline Treasure', American Journal of Archaeology, lxxxix,

1985, pp. 135-41 (139-41); J. Dresken-Weiland, Relief ierte Tischplatten aus theodosianischer Z^r, Vatican 1991, p. 39, n. 221; B. Kiilerich, Late Fourth Century Classi cism in the Plastic Arts, Odense 1993, p. 165.

6. See Kiilerich (as in n. 5), p. 164; Eisner (as in n. 5), p. 24; and A. Cameron, 'Observations on the

Distribution and Ownership of Late Roman Silver

Plate', Journal of Roman Archaeology, v, 1995, pp. 175

85 (185) on the value of silver.

7. H. Buschhausen, Die sp?tr?mischen Metallscrinia

und fr?hchristlichen Reliquiare I, Wiener Byzantini stische Studien, ix, Vienna 1971, pp. 210-14; Shelton

(as in n. 5), pp. 31-35; Eisner (as in n. 5) pp. 22 and 24. 8. See A. de Waal, 'Zur Chronologie des Bassus

Sarkophagus in den Grotten von Sankt Peter', R?mische Quartalschrift, xxi, 1907, pp. 117-34 (117 20).

9. See M. Wyke, 'The Woman in the Mirror: the Rhetoric of Adornment in the Roman World', in

Women in Ancient Societies, ed. L. Archer, S. Fischler



JAS ELSNER 25

,_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I

4. Brescia, Museo Cristiano, Lipsanotheca, ivory, perhaps north Italian, perhaps c. 380 AD, top side of lid

(after Kollwitz, Die Lipsanothek von Brescia, 1933)

5. Lipsanotheca, front (Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)




6. London, British Museum, Projecta Casket, silver repousse with some gilding, perhaps Rome, mid- to later fourth century, front of lid and base (CThe British Museum)

adumbration of their function and meaning through decoration, as well as great care, even a self-conscious reflexivity, in their iconographic choices. The compar able intensity of interest in framing the dead, the sacred, and the domestic in fourth-century Roman art is noteworthy. Likewise, the strategy of framing images from one sphere with those of another (Christian with Jewish in the case of the Lipsanotheca, Christian with traditional Roman in the Bassus sarcophagus, pagan mythological with the domestic in the Projecta Casket) is common to all three objects and hence to the use of imagery across their discrete contexts.

Let us now proceed by exploring the framing strategies of each box in turn. The front of the Junius Bassus sarcophagus is its most complex face, carved by the hand of its finest artist,'0 and its iconography is most insistently Christian (Fig. i). The imagery is laid out in the form of a double-register sarcophagus of columnar type (as opposed to a continuous frieze), in which each discrete scene is isolated within an intercolumniation. There is only one other early Christian double-register columnar sarcophagus in the surviving corpus, so clearly the choice of this form was exceptional." In the Bassus sarcophagus, the upper tier is arranged as a colon naded portico with a level entablature, while the lower tier is an arcade of alternating curved arches and pointed gables. Both these choices are familiar in the range of surviving sarcophagi, but the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus is unique in combining them in this way.2 The intercolumnar spaces allow for ten framed scenes-effec tively relief panels inserted in a complex frame for display-each of which contains

and M. Wyke, London 1994, pp. 134-51 (143-44); Eisner (as in n. 5), p. 30.

10. See for example E. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, New York 1992, p. 41.

11. This is now in Saint-Trophime at Aries. See G.

Koch, Fr?hchristliche Sarkophage, Munich 2000, pp.

284-86; and B. Christern-Biesenick, Repertorium der

Christlich-Antiken Sarkophage III. Frankreich, Algerien, Tunesien, Mainz 2003, no. 118, pp. 72-74 with earlier

bibliography, where the sarcophagus is dated to the

third quarter of the 4th century and attributed to a

workshop in Rome.



JAS ELSNER 27

i~~~~~~~~~~~~~ y

7. Projecta Casket, lid with front and sides (icThe British Museum)

8. Project casket, back of lid and base with hinges and handles (iThe British Museum)

12. The Aries example has alternating arches and

gables in both registers. A number of single-register columnar sarcophagi alternate arches or gables with a

flat lintel-like beam, e.g., Bovini and Brandenburg (as in n. 2), nos. 49, 57 and 676, and Christern-Biesenick

(as in n. 11), nos. 26 and 53.




two or three figures. While the other columns are spirally fluted, the two central columns in each register are carved with putti harvesting grape-vines (a strongly Eucharistic iconography in the Christian context). 13 This device marks out the two central scenes as of particular importance. That below shows Christ's adventus into Jerusalem, a triumphal moment in his earthly life and the opening event of his Passion.'4That above has Christ enthroned over a personification (perhaps of Caelus, the Cosmos) as he hands the Law to Peter and Paul, a representation of Christ's triumph after the Resurrection with eschatological implications of the Second Coming.'5 Both these scenes draw on imperial iconographic models,'6 in keeping with the imagery developed for high officials like Bassus in the later fourth and fifth centuries.I7

By contrast with frieze sarcophagi, where Christological and Old Testament subjects merge into each other in the visual field, the framing strategy of columnar sarcophagi allows each scene to stand in isolation as an image in its own right. Potentially, it may allow viewers to make a more direct reference to the relevant scriptural underpinnings of a given scene. In one case-the two intercolumniations at the right of the upper tier-it is not clear whether two distinct scenes (the arrest of Christ, and Pilate washing his hands) are represented, or one subject is spread over two intercolumniations (Christ before Pilate). The choice of an arcade for the lower register of the Bassus sarcophagus allows the framing of six small scenes in the spandrels of the arches between the top of the lower register and the base of the upper register. These scenes, which represent their actors not as human figures but as lambs, are both much smaller than the intercolumnar panels and in certain cases ambivalent. Two spandrels, the second from the left and second from the right, show respectively a lamb striking a rock, and a lamb receiving the Law. Since Scripture and later tradition report these narratives of both Peter and Moses, it is not possible to decide which is intended (and it may be that both are meant).'8

A complex ideological argument on the sarcophagus's main face is created by the typology of Old and NewTestament scenes, as well as references to the lives and martyrdoms of the Roman apostles, Peter and Paul.I9This face is itself framed by the imagery chosen for the lid and the two ends of the sarcophagus. The lid

13. E.g., Malbon (as in n. 2), pp. 120-21.

14. Malbon (as in n. 2), pp. 53-54.

15. Ibid., pp. 49-53. 16. On the imperial theme, see for example A.

Grabar, The Beginnings of Christian Art, London 1967,

pp. 246-49; S. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in

Late Antiquity, Berkeley 1981, pp. 65-66 and 129-31. Tom Mathews's failure to discuss these images in his

attack on 'the emperor mystique' in early Christian art substantively vitiates an otherwise useful (if over

stated) corrective. SeeT. Mathews, The Clash of Gods, Princeton 1993, with D. Kinney, 'Review of T.

Matthews, The Clash of Gods'', Studies in Iconography, xvi, 1994, pp. 237-42 (239-41).

17. Notably the string of consular diptychs dated

between the late 4th and 6th centuries, conveniently

collected in Volbach (as in n. 3), nos. 1-65, pp. 28-56; see also C. Olovsdotter, The Consular Diptychs. An

Iconological Study, G?teborg 2003, with recent bibli

ography. *

18. Malbon (as in n. 2), pp. 72-73. On Peter

striking the rock, a subject that appears in art before

it enters early Christian literature, see H. Kessler, 'Scenes from the Acts of the Apostles on Some Early

Christian Ivories', Gesta, xvni, 1979, pp. 109-19 (112

13).

19. See J. Eisner, 'Inventing Christian Rome: the

Role of Early Christian Art', in Rome. The Cosmopolis, ed. C. Edwards and G.Wolf, Cambridge 2003, pp. 71 99 (85-87 and 89).



JAS ELSNER 29

survives in an extremely fragmentary form, but a series of finds in I942 and I979 (including the bulk of the lid's verse inscription), as well as some acute archaeolo gical work in joining the fragments, have at least clarified its general iconography.20 Framed between masks of the Sun and Moon, the lid appears to have displayed a central verse inscription between two figural scenes, whose subject matter, by contrast with the insistent Christian iconography of the main face, was secular. The relief on the right was a meal of the dead, including a couch (on which a portrait of Bassus himself may have been shown reclining), a child, a dog, an instrument player, and a table laid with wine and fish (which may itself suggest Eucharistic connotations). The scene on the left is too damaged for convincing identification, but its likely secular content (say a scene of dextrarum iunctio) is an attractive possi bility beside its companion funerary meal. The poetic inscription, which forms the centrepiece of the lid composition, insistently avoids any reference to Christianity (unlike the prose inscription on the upper rim of the base), and offers instead an elegiac funerary lament on the decease of the city prefect.2' Its reference to the city colonnades and the rooftops themselves weeping for Bassus, as well as the Roman people and the Senate, might prompt renewed consideration of the framing device of the main body of the sarcophagus with its colonnaded portico and its arcade of arches.

The reliefs on the ends of the Bassus sarcophagus represent the four seasons,22 although with a Christianising twist (Figs 2-3). The left side (Fig. 2) is wholly devoted to autumn, with scenes of putti (all winged and most cloaked) harvesting grapes, bringing them to the wine-press by ox-cart, and pressing them. The upper band on the right end (Fig. 3) depicts summer, with winged and cloaked putti harvesting wheat; the lower band on the right end shows six wingless putti in a row, the first of whom from the left is clothed and carries a basket of olives and an olive branch (a typical attribute of winter), whereas the others are nude and carry various attributes of spring. Clearly the emphasis on autumn and summer, with their wine and bread imagery potentially alluding to the Eucharist, may be read in the light of the Christian emphasis of the main face. But the general seasonal intimations of the ends, enclosing the main face of the sarcophagus with a framing device, highly traditional in Roman art, that suggests notions of cyclical time,23 cannot be ignored.

20. The fundamental publications include N.

Himmelmann, Typologische Untersuchungen an R?mis

chen Sarkophagreliefs des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts n. Chr., Mainz 1973; G. Daltrop, 'Anpassung eines Relieffrag mentes an den Deckel des Iunius Bassus Sarkophags', Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia di Archeologia, Li-Lii, 1978-80, pp. 157-70; W Wischmeyer, Die Tafel deckel der christlichen Sarkophage konstantinischer Zeit

in Rom, Rome 1982, pp. 23-36; R. Amedick, Die

Sarkophage mit Darstellungen und Menschenleben IV

Vita Privata, Berlin 1991, no. 300, p. 170. 21. See the discussions of A. Cameron, 'The

Funeral of Junius Bassus', Zeitschift f?r Papyrologie und

Epigraphik, cxxxix, 2002, pp. 288-92; and J. Eisner, 'Art and Text', in A Companion to Latin Literature, ed.

S. Harrison, Oxford 2005, pp. 300-18. Malbon (as in

n. 2), pp. 114-16 is fundamentally flawed in discussion

of the inscription, both by giving an incorrect version

of the original (whose restorations fail to scan for

instance) and a garbled translation. 22. See G. M. A. Hanfmann, The Seasons Sarco

phagus in Dumbarton Oaks, Cambridge MA 1951, pp.

184-85; Malbon (as in n. 2), pp. 99-103; D. Bielefeld, Die Stadtr?mische Eroten-Sarkophage II. Weinlese und

Ernteszenen, Berlin 1997, no. 217, p. 140.

23. See J. Eisner, 'Making Myth Visual: the Horae

of Philostratus and the Dance of the Text', R?mische

Mitteilungen, evil, 2000, pp. 253-76, esp. pp. 266-76 on seasonal framing, and pp. 272-75 on the Bassus

sarcophagus.



30 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY Two other sarcophagi, like that of Bassus, have seasonal ends in two registers: the Three Good Shepherds sarcophagus of about 370 AD, whose iconography is closely parallel to that of the Bassus sarcophagus and may well have been modeled on it,14 and a Dionysiac sarcophagus of about 270 AD from Auletta and now in Naples.25

While the iconography of the ends on the Auletta sarcophagus differs from that of the Bassus and the Three Shepherds sarcophagi (which parallel each other rela tively closely), its seasons are also represented as putti arranged in two registers, one register for each of the seasons. Even the specific emphasis on putti harvest ing wheat and trampling grapes, in which scholarship on the Bassus sarcophagus has tended to see Christian meaning, is anticipated by numerous non-Christian sarcophagus ends with these themes from the third and fourth centuries.26

My discussion so far might be characterised as neo-formalist. My aim has been to show how much care has gone into framing strategies, both within the colon nading of the main face, and in the relationship of the front with the ends and the lid. If we turn to issues of iconographic substance and meaning, we might say that both the lid (with the masks of Sol and Luna) and the main casket of the sarco phagus (with the seasons on the sides) are framed in a way that implies the cyclical passing of time, setting their respective imagery in a broader universalising picture of natural change. The Christianity of the front is firmly framed by both the lid and the ends in secularising and traditional imagery that alludes to the deep past with its long-continued culture of seasonal activity and the rituals of life and death. Christian identities (reaching from the Passion and selected Old Testament ante cedents, via the apostolic traditions of the city of Rome (in Peter and Paul), to the baptism of Junius Bassus himself in the near present, as advertised on the inscrip tion on the rim of the base)27 are enclosed in a careful evocation of Roman tradi tionalism whose apogee is the poetic inscription in the centre of the lid. Within its specific historical context of fundamental and substantive cultural change, the Bassus sarcophagus may be seen as an eloquent visual plea concerning the rise of the new faith and its relations to the hallowed past. It is a monument to the integration of profound (often polemically expressed) differences via juxtaposition, effectively to the toleration of many more aspects of traditional pagan culture than would ultimately be acceptable. It speaks of a Christianity inserted into the tradi tional norms, rather than one that extirpates or replaces them.2 What matters for our purposes here is that it accomplishes all this via the rhetoric of framing. The formal placing of images on the sarcophagus is not only a matter of aesthetics or

24- See Bovini and Brandenburg (as in n. 2) no.

29; Malbon (as in n. 2), pp. 99-100 and 102; and

Bielefeld (as in n. 22), no. 214, pp. 139-40, whose

dating I follow here. If the Three Good Shepherds

sarcophagus is earlier than the Bassus sarcophagus, as for example Malbon (as in n. 2, pp. 96 and 99)

suggests, then clearly the line of influence would need

to be reversed.

25. See F. Matz, Die Dionysischen Sarkophage III, Berlin 1969, no. 229, pp. 403-04, and Bielefeld (as in

n. 22), no. 56, p. no.

26. See Bielefeld (as in n. 22), nos. 6,117,142,174 and 185 (as well as the fragmentary nos. 73 and 154) with wine pressing on both ends, and nos. 40, 81 and

140 with wheat harvesting at one end and wine press

ing at the other.

27. See Eisner (as in n. 19), pp. 85-87. 28. More on this in relation to other objects like

the Codex-Calendar of 354 ad in Eisner (as in n. 19), pp. 79-89.



JAS ELSNER 3I

typology, or of iconographic models and borrowings; rather-at least in the issue of the relationship of the lid and sides to the main face-formal choices perform fundamental cultural work.

As far as the Bassus sarcophagus's function as a coffin is concerned, its imagery may be said to be singularly self-reflexive and even obsessed with the theme of death. The masks of Sol and Luna on the lid and the seasons on the two ends signal the temporal frame within which a life and a death must fall. Both the lid and the base inscriptions are eloquent on Bassus's own death (a particular and personal death amidst the more universal intimations of the seasons and planets), the poetic lament on the lid juxtaposed against the precision of the dating and the message of a Christian baptism on the upper rim of the base.The one lid image that survives well enough for identification shows the funerary meal: death in the context of secular living and traditional Roman burial practice. The Christian images on the main front are singularly focused on dying, with references to the death of Jesus and the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul (admittedly all of these oblique, through scenes of arrest rather than death or burial), and the sacrifice of Isaac (admittedly a death that did not happen), as well as to the images of the triumph over death (such as Daniel in the Lions' Den, not to speak of the scene of Christ between Peter and Paul at the centre of the upper register).29 Clearly this imagery is not only self-referential in relation to the sarcophagus's function as a coffin, but it represents a calculated argument for the special nature of Christian dying-by contrast with the secular world of the lid-as transcending death and giving hope of a new life in the Resurrected Lord.

In turning to the Brescia and Projecta caskets, one difference from the Bassus sarcophagus is worth emphasising. The sarcophagus of Junius Bassus is a box designed to contain the body of a man; the two caskets are boxes designed to be handled by men (and in the case of the Projecta Casket at least, also or even primarily by women). They are not only very much smaller,30 of course, but their material functions-how they are handled in relation to the body of a viewer mean that the chief face is not the front (as in the case of the Bassus sarcophagus and sarcophagi in general), but the lid. Even if the Bassus sarcophagus were not placed on a base of some sort (and we have no idea how it was displayed or even if it was visible at all), it can be contemplated by a spectator primarily from the front, like a painting or relief panel. The two caskets, sitting on a table, say, or in the hands of a viewer, are most naturally observed primarily from above.

The cover of the Brescia Lipsanotheca consists of a flat oblong ivory lid, which would be seen from above, supported on a narrow vertical band on all four sides. The flat top of the cover (Fig. 4), beneath a narrow strip with birds, perhaps doves, has two registers of Christological imagery showing a historically ordered narrative of the events leading up to the Passion, from Christ in the garden of Gethsemane,

29. This either represents Christ resurrected

between the still-living apostles, or it shows all three in

their collective heavenly glory, triumphant after death.

30. See above for the dimensions.




via his arrest and the denial of Peter (in the top tier), to his appearances before Caiaphas and Pilate (in the lower register).3' The vertical sides of the lid are deco rated with medallion portraits (some now lost); there are four on each side, but five on the front, with Jesus in the centre between Peter and Paul (e.g., Fig. 5) .32

No one has made any sense of the number of portraits (seventeen in all, largely unidentifiable in the absence of inscriptions), but they presumably represent either early Christian saints (perhaps mostly apostles), or a mix of saints and Old Testa ment prophets. If the former, then the lid offers a historical descent from the salvific living presence of Christ, as embodied in his Passion, to the Church, as embodied in his disciples and successors. If the latter, then the lid mixes OldTestament fore runners of Christ who prophesied his coming with later witnesses. Both interpret ations are perhaps possible at the same time.

The four sides of the base are subject to complex framing (Fig. 5, for a view of the front). At the top of each face is the band of medallion portraits that forms part of the lid. To the right and left, occupying the surface space of the uprights that serve as the casket's four legs, are narrow panels with images. These may have only decorative significance (e.g., the tree on the left edge of the right side), but appear sometimes to have symbolic resonances (for example, the fish on the left of the front, or the cross and the lampstand on the left side) and occasionally to venture into the substance of the casket's larger iconographic argument by referring to a specific moment in scripture or Christian tradition, most notably in the case of the hanging Judas to the right of the back, and the cock on a column at the right of the front, apparently signifying Peter's denial and hence repeating the same motif as the lid.33Within this overall frame are three registers of images, the central regis ter being significantly larger than the others and being uniformly concerned with

New Testament scenes, most of them representing Christ from the Gospels, but including the story of Peter, Sapphira and Ananias from Acts 5. i-i i on the back.34 The narrow bands above and below this largely Christological register sandwich the casket's insistent Christianity within a frame of Old Testament typologies.35

The Brescia Lipsanotheca effectively employs an extremely complex version of the framing strategy we have encountered in the Bassus sarcophagus, but this time with no hint of a traditional polytheistic cultural context, no genuflection as it were to Hellenism. Instead, the larger registers-both on the sides and on the lid-as well as the roundels with portraits emphasise the Christian dispensation, while Jewish imagery is chosen for the smaller bands both to prefigure the Christian message typologically and to be surpassed by it in both size and visual emphasis. Speaking to an ecclesiastical audience in as liturgically charged a context as a

31. Tkacz (as in n. 3), pp. 28-30 and 196-200, also

pp. 63-107 for a detailed argument about the typo

logical relations of the Old Testament scenes on the

sides to the lid.

32. Tkacz (as in n. 3), pp. 46-47 and 233-36 with

full bibliography.

33. On the uprights, see Tkacz (as in n. 3), pp. 239

43

34- SeeTkacz (as in n. 3), pp. 30-46, 203-05, 213

14, 221-23 and 23? f?r identifications, discussion and

bibliography. 35. Tkacz (as in n. 3), pp. 201-02, 206-12, 225-29

and 231 with detailed discussion, identifications and

bibliography.



JAS ELSNER 33

reliquary or pyxis, and within an exclusively Christian regime of representation, the Lipsanotheca constructs a world where the traditional Roman culture that the Bassus sarcophagus affirms as ancestral not only does not exist, but has never existed, save as that which Christ's Incarnation negated (in the form of Pilate, for instance). It posits an exclusively Jewish (rather than pagan Roman) past, from

which emerge, via typological selection, the Christian dispensation of miracle and Passion, as well as the specifically Roman (and hence Italian) succession of Christ's mission in the imagery of Peter the Roman apostle, from his denial on the lid via his medallion portrait and the image of the crowing cock on the front, to his appear ance as judge after Jesus's death in the narrative of Sapphira and Ananias. Again, framing is essential as a formal means of conveying an ideological position. By contrast with the plea made via the juxtaposition of different worlds by the Bassus sarcophagus (true to its specific sphere of traditional aristocratic patronage in Rome in the 350s), the Brescia Lipsanotheca insists on Christian exclusivity in ways that may reflect the cultural realities of the last decades of the fourth century, when the banning of pagan practices was becoming widespread. Just as we cannot be wholly certain of the Lipsanotheca's precise function, so its imagery is relatively less self-reflexive than that of the Bassus sarcophagus or Projecta Casket.What matters here is less the advertisement of function (which one might take to be rendered wholly obvious by ritual handling during the liturgy or other activities related to veneration) than the insistence on Christian readings in an item of ecclesiastical usage.

The Projecta Casket is a much more complex shape than the other two boxes: two truncated rectangular pyramids joined together at their wider faces so that one forms the lid and the other the base (Figs 6-8). This gives a total often flat surfaces, of which only the bottom one is not decorated, leaving five faces on the lid and four on the base. While the material, structure, and iconographic argument of the Bassus sarcophagus and the Brescia Lipsanotheca make the hierarchy of their images relatively straightforward, culminating respectively in the Christian front of Bassus's coffin and the Passion themes of the Brescia Lipsanotheca's lid, the complexity of the Projecta Casket's form allows a greater complexity of emphasis. There is clearly a front (Figs 6-7)-the side opposite to where the hinges are placed (Fig. 8)-on whose iconography the two shorter sides of the lid are designed to converge (Fig. 7). The back (Fig. 8) is marked not only by the orientation of its images-backwards vis-'a-vis those on the horizontal flat panel of the lid and the lid's prime frontal face with its famous toilet of Venus-but also by the fact that the two back faces, of the lid and base, are the only faces where gilding was not applied.36 But which of the three faces that constitute the front is the prime one is more difficult to tell. The top panel, showing the married couple in their finery in a wreath between cupids (Fig. 7), is especially significant in the marital context to which the casket is usually attributed and to which its inscription draws attention.

36. Shelton (as in n. 5), p. 74 - also arguing that

gilding is more prominent on the casket than other

decorative treatments, such as stippling and groov

ing.




But the epiphany of nude Venus in a cockle-shell between centaurotritons on the lid's front (Fig. 7), and the regal image on the front of the base of a splendidly adorned lady of the house (Projecta?) at her toilet (Fig. 6), in imitation or emulation of the toilet of Venus above her, both have claims to a certain priority. While the iconography of Venus and 'Projecta' are clearly designed to reflect each other, the circular wreath of the married couple on top frames them in a medallion shape echoing or echoed by the circular cockle-shell in which Venus sits.37

Each of the five panels on the lid is framed with a garland motif, which is also used to create the wreath, held by the two naked cupids, in which the couple (Secundus and Projecta?) appear on the top. As if to emphasise its iconic signifi cance, this top panel has a second frame, which has been described as a 'stylized floral motif'.38 The wreath-pattern effectively implies a parallelism or inter-linkage of all the scenes on the lid in relation to the couple. Each of the decorated panels of the base is also framed, this time with a frieze of vines and clusters of grapes, for which it would be hard to argue a Christian significance. The base (Fig. 6) is further constructed as a colonnade of spirally fluted columns with alternating round arches and pointed gables (a round arch always being in the centre of any one side), just like the lower register of the Bassus sarcophagus. Except for the lady of the house seated in the centre of the front, there are three figures on each side, one in each intercolumniation, all of them servants standing between drawn-back curtains and carrying accoutrements of the toilet. The servants may constitute a procession,39 or simply exemplify the lady's range and variety of attendants.4? All the other spaces generated by this framing (for instance the spandrels of the arches and the spaces to the left and right of the outer columns on the two longer sides) are filled with a variety of items: peacocks, birds, bowls of fruit.

In the case of the Projecta Casket, this framing allows creative and amusing play through the repetition of different motifs in different, discretely framed-off sections of the casket's surface. The cupid riding a centaurotriton to the right of Venus on the front of the lid offers her a bowl of fruit like those in the spandrels of the base. Behind the scene on the back of the lid showing a procession to the baths is an arcade of rounded and pointed arches on spirally fluted columns that evokes the framing of the base. On the right side of the lid, the bird to the left of the nereid riding a hippocampus appears to reflect the birds in the spandrels of the arches on the base.4' Most striking, in what the casket has already set up as a super self-reflexive dynamic of imagery, is the representation of items of the toilet, like the Projecta Casket itself. Venus looks into a mirror held out by the centaurotriton to her right (Fig. 6), just as 'Projecta' is offered a mirror by the maid to her right (Fig. 6), while the attendant to the right at the back of the base also appears to be bearing a mirror. The maid to the left of 'Projecta' on the base brings her a casket, while the cupid on Venus's left holds out a box (Fig. 6), and on the back of the lid

37- See especially L. Schneider, Die Dom?ne als

Weltbild. Wirkungsstrukturen der sp?tantiken Bilder

spache, Wiesbaden 1983, pp. 27-33 on these formal

parallels.

38. Shelton (as in n. 5), p. 72.

39. Following Shelton (as in n. 5), p. 32.

40. Following Eisner (as in n. 5), p. 28.

41. Shelton (as in n. 5, p. 73) calls the bird a duck.



JAS ELSNER 35

two attendants carry caskets (as does each maid in the centre of the two shorter sides of the base), all of them boxes, perhaps 'like' the Projecta casket itself (Fig. 8). Other figures carry other items such as a circular casket hanging from chains or lamps that resemble other objects which appear to have been part of the larger collection of silverware within which the Projecta Casket was found.42

This interweaving of iconographic motifs between discrete elements of the casket is clearly designed to emphasise the parallelisms of the divine-mythological sphere of the toilet of Venus with accompanying nereids, on the front and two side panels of the lid, with the rest of the iconography, which is domestic and secular. The recapitulation of the base's arcade in the scene on the back of the lid links it firmly by means of framing devices with the domestic sphere of the base. Mytho logical imagery is here fully framed by the domestic: the three marine Venus panels sit on the base with a scene of domestic bathing (a procession to the baths) on the back of the lid (intruding as it were into the casket's divine register); all this is capped with the medallion portrait of the couple at the top. The human imagery refers to acculturated water: that used for domestic bathing and adornment; the divine imagery is of nature's water: the sea and its gods. The upper panel unites the two themes of this visual fugue with the couple (including 'Projecta', now fully adorned after all the work shown on the base) between cupids, borrowed as it were from the divine register of the epiphany of Venus. Is the appearance of Venus the blessing for the marital life of Secundus and Projecta, or is their life as depicted on the casket a celebration ofVenus? Does Venus's nudity figure the sexuality that Projecta as aristocratic wife (and Christian matron) must disguise in public?43 And how can this rich visual argument for a traditional late antique Hellenism in the private sphere be made to work alongside the exhortation, inscribed on the rim of the lid immediately below the image of Venus, for Secundus and Projecta to live in Christ?

Let us stand back briefly from our close examination of these boxes. I have been careful not to ask too explicit a question of them so far, although choosing to put them together (the first time this has been done in a close comparative argument, so far as I know) is already to argue a kind of ideological programme, inasmuch as it frames our boxes together by reference to each other. Had I agendas that specifically concerned, for instance, objects in marble, or ivory, or silver, then I should not have made the choice of framing these three specific items in the space of one discussion. This reflection raises a homology between what our boxes do in constructing various kinds of frames for the iconography that decorates them and what I am doing-what the scholarly enterprise itself does-in asking academic questions of particular classes or selections of material.We are constantly conduct ing a framing exercise, side by side with an exercise in researching and presenting primary evidence (whether material, cultural, historical, literary, and so forth).

42. The Muse Casket is round and hangs from

chains; see Buschhausen (as in n. 7), pp. 214-17, and

Shelton (as in n. 5), pp. 75-77. The elaborate silver

candelabrum has been lost; see Shelton (as in n. 5),

P-94

43. Following Eisner (as in n. 5), pp. 30-32.




One might say that getting the balance right is the essence of the enterprise: the price of excessive empiricism would be a neglect of the ideological or argumentative frame, and the price of an excessive form of theory, or methodological self-reflec tion, would be a neglect of what lies inside the frame.

So, what conclusion and hypotheses can be drawn from a comparison of our three boxes? I hope we can agree that all three exhibit substantive interest in their frames. All three conduct their framing on three levels. As boxes, they are containers for material constituted of something different from themselves.44 As complex decorative objects, their surfaces show a formal interest in dividing up and contain ing their iconographic subject matter in different forms of framing (for instance arches and spandrels) and banding or tiering. Within this strategy of multiple regis ters, each box also uses the substantive meanings of one iconography to sandwich, or frame, or contain, the substantive meanings of a second iconography that is (within the visual rhetoric of that box) potentially more important. So in the Bassus sarcophagus, the Christian front is framed by the traditional secularism of the lid and sides. In the Brescia Lipsanotheca, the Christologies of the sides and lid are framed by two bands of Jewish imagery around the top and bottom of the base. In the Projecta Casket, not only are three faces of mythical-divine imagery on the lid framed by the domestic-secular imagery of the base and back, but the double portrait in a medallion wreath on the lid combines elements of both these spheres and may be said to be framed by both (although the language of interweaving strands of imagery might be more appropriate in discussion of a garland motif and a wreath).

Taken together, what kind of story do our boxes tell? That is, what is the appropriate frame for them, or into what box should we put them? These are more serious questions than may at first appear; they firmly emphasise the ideological or instrumental purposes with which I started (perhaps unconsciously) in this inquiry. If I were to play the cultural historian, I might want to say that all three boxes together give a penetrating insight into the complexities and multiplicity of positions, even identities, around the interface of Christianity and paganism in the second half of the fourth century. Or I might say that we witness a chronological movement from the acceptability of traditional Hellenism in the Bassus sarco phagus in 359 to its draining away by the later fourth century (say the 380s) in the Brescia Lipsanotheca. Here the Projecta Casket (if early, say 330-60) supports the case for traditional Hellenism openly juxtaposed with or against Christianity, or (if late, say 370-80) suggests that the ecclesiastical and domestic spheres offer deeply different patterns of development as regards Christianisation in this period. Or I might say that the three objects-respectively funerary, liturgical and domestic -show different patterns and etiquettes of Christianisation across different social spheres in broadly the same culture. If I were to play the art historian, I might

44- If however the Lipsanotheca contained bones as relics, then its ivory might be construed as a kind of

bone.



JAS ELSNER 37 want to say that these three boxes demonstrate a particular and unusual interest in complex decorative detail, both on the level of transmitting meanings and on the level of elaborate formal framing, that is typical of the arts of a particular moment in late antiquity, the moment defined by the exquisite sculpted miniature at the expense of large-scale statuary.45 Or I might wish to say that what these boxes showed was typical less of a specific time than of the patronage of a particular culti vated group of aristocrats based in the uniquely charged location of Rome, at a point when the imperial capital had already been moved elsewhere. Yet such big historical claims-claims in the larger history of art-might be reformulated as an observation about the trans-historical (or strictly formal) nature of boxes. Being relatively small objects, designed for handling and close attention by their users, boxes might be said to attract greater interest in intricate and small-scale decoration than larger works, especially in the case of examples executed in expensive materials for wealthy patrons and connoisseurs. In particular, the three-dimensional framing function of a lavishly decorated box as a container turns out, interestingly, to influ ence the two-dimensional framing strategies of these boxes' decoration, both in the sandwiching of one class of iconography with another and in the choice of a variety of specific ornamental devices for formal framing, from intercolumniations to wreath-patterns, medallions, panelling and banding. Making an argument of this kind would be to stake a claim about a class of material culture rather than a period of art history.46 If I were to play the religious historian of Christian origins, I might want to note the different genealogies of Christianity emphasised by the different choices made in framing Christian subjects. The Bassus sarcophagus places a fundamentally Romanocentric Christian iconography in the midst of a traditional series of references to the cultural norms of Roman paganism (at least among the aristocracy), a culture built on and surpassed by the new faith. The Brescia Lipsanotheca chooses instead to frame its narrative of Christian triumph in a Jewish genealogy: a wholly different set of origins, and a scriptural rather than cultural lineage well suited to a liturgical as opposed to an elite funerary context. Largely eschewing religion, the Projecta Casket frames domesticity and marriage in a non Christian world of mythical allusion. Here the choices of frame become a figure for the differing options available for tracing genealogy in the cultural firmament of fourth-century Italy, both the actual origins of the Christianity practised by late antique Romans and the profound projections of desired and preferred models of paternity hardly unsusceptible to psychoanalytic turns of interpretative invest ment.

Given what might be called the tongue-in-cheek formalism of my discussion (which has reduced-or is it elevated?-even subject matter and iconography to forms of 'framing'), I have no wish to offer preferences about which of these

45- J- Eisner, 'Late Antique Art: the Problem of the

Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic', in Approach

ing Late Antiquity. The Transformation from Early to Late

Empire, ed. S. Swain and M. Edwards, Oxford 2004,

pp. 271-309 (293-304).

46. For instance, the box as a specific kind of

miniature, like the doll's house. On this, see S.

Stewart, On Longing. Narratives of the Miniature, the

Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Durham NC

I9933 PP- 61-65.




positions one might prefer. Indeed, all are more or less plausible, given different interests and starting points, and I have myself entertained most of them at some time or other. The more interesting issue is how apparently formal choices about

what materials to discuss, coupled with particular selectivities about what aspects of them to emphasise, generate conclusions that can appear substantive either as historical or art historical generalisations.

No less than the problem of what significance to give to the framing strategies in any or all of our boxes is the problem of how we frame their discussion (the discussion in fact of any empirical material, be it art or literature or any other sort of documentary evidence or material culture), and to what extent our conclusions are guided (consciously or not) by the acts of framing. Formalism, so long derided as an inappropriately reductive tool of literary or artistic analysis, may turn out to be a deeper discursive structure governing rhetorical and methodological strategies of argument, which purport to be very far from formalist. Just as the substantive iconographic content of our boxes within their panels and frames turns out to be a form of framing in its own right, so arguments that deliver historical or art historical conclusions worryingly may be no more than the results of our own frames. That, in conclusion, is the anxiety about framing that I have found opening up before me as I attempted to unwrap the formal packaging of these caskets from long ago.47

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

47- It is a special honour to contribute a paper to the celebration of the Courtauld Institute's 75th

birthday: I spent eight happy years there as a member

of the teaching staff, as well as one as a Master's

Student. My thanks are due to Paul Crossley and John Lowden for the invitation, as well as to Verity Platt and

Michael Squire for providing the forum where this

piece was originally delivered and for their comments.



Documents

8.26.14 Els Ner Framing Objects