Statuette of the Good Shepherd

Photogallery

Statuette of the Good Shepherd
Statuette of the Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd and Jonah

The theme of the "shepherd" is one of the most emblematic in ancient Christian art, and the statuette in the Pius-Christian Museum, an eighteenth century reworking of a fragment from a sarcophagus, is undoubtedly one of its most famous and evocative representations. The "kriophoros" shepherd, holding a ram or a lamb on his shoulders, is an icon rooted in classical art, as a representation of one of the serving faithful and later as an allegory of "philanthropy". The image was adopted in funerary art, among the characters of bucolic scenes alluding to otherworldly bliss, and was finally inherited by Christians, in relation to the figure of Christ, the "Good Shepherd" (Jn 10, 11) and the parable of the lost sheep (Mt 18, 12-14; Lk 15, 4-7). The statuette in the Pius-Christian Museum, with its splendid face recalling Apollo and typical of the most ancient iconography of Christ, is without doubt evidence of the latter semantic evolution.