Vatican Museums

The epitaph of Gregoria, mutilated but which can be in part completed, is laid out at the sides of a figurative ternary diagram: at the centre there is the deceased in a position implying prayer, with hands raised, in the act of praying or in the condition of beatitude reached in paradise; her head is veiled and she is wearing the dalmatic, a large tunic originally from Dalmatia which was commonly used throughout the Roman Empire and is frequently depicted in the images of prayer in catacomb paintings (remnants of this type of clothing were found in Egyptian tombs of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.). This image is flanked by two elements similar to wheels; they are in fact circles containing the Christological monogram ΧΡ (the Greek initials of Χριστός “Christ”), now partly erased. Gregoria, who died at the age of 5 years or possibly more, received the epigraph from her father; it concludes with the usual formula in pace, alluding to the peace of the tomb or perhaps to peace in the afterlife.