A Marble Relief Fragment, Roman Imperial, Gallienic, A.D. 250-270

from the lid of a sarcophagus, carved in high relief with a blank tabula ansata and a pair of chariot-riding erotes each personifying one of the four Seasons, on the left Summer wearing a chlamys, holding a sickle, and driving a lion- or panther-drawn chariot over a basket filled with ears of grain, on the right Autumn wearing a chlamys, holding a basket of fruits, and leading his ibex(?)-drawn chariot over a fruit basket, to the left of the tabula fragmentary Winter wearing a tunic and holding a leafy branch, Spring now missing, the right corner of the lid finely carved in the form of a theater mask, the face with prominent chin, full lips, straight nose, eyes with incised irises and recessed crescentic pupils, the hair arranged in a top-knot and falling in comma-shaped locks over the forehead and in voluted curls over the temple and neck, the inscription D(iis) M(anibus), "to the spirits of the departed," engraved on the frame above the tabula.

from a hypogeum discovered in the 19th Century or earlier off the Via Appia Antica in Rome
Sig. Benedetto Grandi, Via Appia Pignatelli, Rome, second half of the 19th Century
Baron Carlo Franchetti, Via Appia Pignatelli, Rome, second quarter of the 20th Century
J.J. Klejman, New York, 1960s
American private collection, 1960s/1990s
The Nature Conservancy (Christie's, New York, June 2nd, 1995, no. 112, illus. and cover illus.)

Antonio Ferrua, "La catacombe della Santa Croce," Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, vol. 31, 1955, pp. 158-159, fig. 4
Antonio Ferrua, in Triplice Omaggio a sua Santità Pio XII offerto dalle Pontificie Accademie di S. Tommaso e di religione cattolica, di Archeologie, e dei Virtuosi al Pantheon, Vatican City, vol. 2, 1958, p. 74, pl. 10
Peter Kranz, Jahreszeiten-Sarkophage. Entwicklung und Ikonographie des Motivs der vier Jahreszeiten auf kaiserzeitlichen Sarkophagen und Sarkophagdeckeln (Antiken Sarkophagreliefs, vol. 5, part 4), Berlin, 1984, no. 319, pl. 91.2
Lorenzo Abad Casal, s.v. "Kairoi/tempora anni," Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, vol. V, Munich, 1990, p. 902, no. 115

For a related example in the Vatican, Museo Chiaramonti, see Kranz, op. cit., no. 324, pl. 92.1-2; LIMC, vol. V, p. 902, no. 115. Also see the drawing of a lid formerly in the Palazzo Corsini (Kranz, op. cit, no. 321, pl. 91.1).

The present lid once rested on a strigillated sarcophagus in a family hypogeum, or underground burial chamber, located above the main staircase leading down to the Catacombe della Santa Croce, off the Via Appia Antica in Rome. The sarcophagus itself had a central medallion with female portrait bust in the center and a Season in each corner (see Kranz, op. cit., no. 160); prior to 1972 it was transferred, without its lid, to the nearby Museo of the Catacombe di Pretestato on the Via Appia, where it was given the inventory no. 905. The sarcophagus and its lid were last recorded together in situ in 1951 in a photograph taken by the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology (neg. no. PCAS Cro S I). The hypogeum contained Christian burials and funerary inscriptions, leading Antonio Ferrua (op. cit., 1955, p. 159) to suggest that either the family had both Christian and Pagan members, or that it was entirely Christian but was not concerned about reusing a sarcophagus with Bacchic imagery.

The hypogeum was located on the grounds of a villa on the Via Appia Pignatelli belonging to Benedetto Grandi, who assembled a collection of sculptural fragments and inscriptions in or around the 1860s; part of the Grandi collection passed, with the villa, to the Franchetti family, then to Bryn Mawr College circa 1970, and finally to the Italian State in 1983 (see M. Parca, The Franchetti Collection in Rome, Rome, 1995, pp. 17-18).