Vatican Museums

This interesting sarcophagus, of which today there remains the decorated front and the fragmented raised section of the lid, has had a somewhat troubled history: it was found intact on the Appian Way, and ended up being dispersed in Sutri, Rome and Bologna (also following a theft). Almost all the surviving fragments are now preserved in the Pius-Christian Museum, acquired between 1757 and 1925. According to the remains of the inscription, Crescens appears to be the name of the deceased; however, the case must have been originally conceived for a woman, as demonstrated by the central figure between two saints, with her arms raised to heaven in the act of prayer. Around the central figures there are depictions of some of the miracles performed by Jesus (Lazarus, the multiplication of the loaves, the wedding at Cana, the bleeding woman) and episodes from the apocryphal Acts of Peter; on the lid, at the sides of the inscription, the scenes of the Nativity and Epiphany and the stories of the prophet Jonah can be recognised.