Fragment of a sarcophagus with Christ and the Evangelists on a ship

Photogallery

Fragment of a sarcophagus with Christ and the Evangelists on a ship
Fragment of a sarcophagus with Christ and the Evangelists on a ship
"Double register" sarcophagi

This is a fragment of a sarcophagus lid (early fourth century), reused in the wall of a house in Spoleto until 1851, and then donated in 1931 to the museum by Natalia Ferraioli, widower of the archaeologist Giovanni Battista De Rossi. The marine scenes and depictions of ships are very common in funerary art, not only Christian, especially from the third century onwards, as a metaphor for joyful situations or journeys to safe havens, also in relation to the Hereafter. In this case, however, as is clearly indicated by the captions referring to the characters, the scene depicted is a meaningful allegory of the Church, seen as a boat with Jesus at the helm, a tendency familiar to early Christian thinkers. The four Evangelists (Matthew is missing as he was depicted in part that is now broken) are the rowers, and they contribute to the definition of this image as a symbolic image of the Church, which carries the salvific Word of God to the world.