Hic requiescunt
The Medieval reuse of an early Christian sarcophagus from Saint Agnes Outside-the-Walls
Vatican Museums Conference Hall – in person and live streaming
The meeting of Thursday 12 December, the last Thursday in the Museums appointment this year, will focus on an early Christian sarcophagus in the Pius-Christian Museum, whose recent restoration – carried out at the Vatican Museums Stone Materials Laboratory – has brought to light new and surprising details, unknown until today.
It is the front of a sarcophagus (c. 330 A.D.) decorated with biblical scenes, which was rediscovered towards the end of the sixteenth century at the Basilica of Saint Agnes on Via Nomentana, in Rome.
Placed in the walls of the Sacred Museum of the Vatican Library in 1757, the marble relief was brought to the Lateran Christian Museum in 1854 and finally the Vatican, where the collection was transferred in 1963. Continuous display on the walls throughout these centuries has made it difficult to view the back of the slab. Its movement for the recent conservation intervention unexpectedly offered the opportunity to discover, on the back of the ancient monument, evidence of its Medieval reuse: a Cosmatesque mosaic decoration with the epitaph of an abbess of the monastery of Saint Agnes who lived in the thirteenth century, whose personality was known, although the tomb had been lost. Enclosed by this same marble, two deceased women, distant in time but animated by the same faith in the Saviour, have thus “rested” at different times.
The fortunate discovery will be presented – after the introductory greetings from the Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, and the Artistic-Scientific Deputy Director Giandomenico Spinola – by Umberto Utro, Director of the Christian Antiquities Department, and the Assistant of the Department, Alessandro Vella, The meeting will conclude with an intervention from Antonella Ballardini, scholar of Roman Medieval art, lecturer at Roma Tre University.
The conference will be followed by a visit to the Pio-Cristiano Museum, where the new display of the sarcophagus will be inaugurated, placed on a base that finally allows both sides of the unique monument to be seen.
