Vatican Museums

The deceased is depicted reclining, wearing a convivial crown, and with a phial (a cup for libations) on the right.
The scene on the front of the casket is set in a natural environment, as indicated by the stony ground. Artemis and Apollo are seated at the extremities, winged and armed with bows; apparently calm, they are massacring the twelve children of Niobe, here represented by just three boys and three young girls, alongside the mother and the elderly teacher, depicted in attitudes of desperation. On the short side on the right there is the destruction of the body of Hector, dragged by Achilles' chariot; on the left, there is instead the duel between a centaur and two Lapiths.
The lid offers a beautiful example of a typological portrait, adhering to the mid-Italic concept of portraiture, expressing the encounter between late-Classical models and the search for individualisation, introduced by Lysippos. The choice of mythical subjects for the case is clearly studied, with emphasis on the patrimony of ethical values, indicating that lack of respect for the latter incurs divine retribution. On account of these aspects of intellectual refinement, as well as for its stylistic characteristics, the sarcophagus may be ascribed to a high-level workshop in Tuscania or Tarquinia, where it would have been commissioned by a cultured patron; the Sarcophagus of the Poet may be attributed to the same workshop.