Cremation urn for a marriage. Ancient Roman, Late Republic – Early Empire, 1st century BC – 1st century AD. Marble. Length 38 cm, depth 30 cm and height 35.5 cm. Height without lid 28.5 cm. CONDITION: In good condition, the urn is intact except for a couple of lines of breakage on the upper edge that closes with the lid, without affecting the side scenes. The lid has a line at the tip of one corner and volumetric loss in the upper area. PROVENANCE: Private collection, France. Formed at the beginning of the 20th century. DESCRIPTION: Complete Roman cinerary urn, from the late Republican or early Imperial era, made entirely of marble and sumptuously decorated with carved reliefs. It would undoubtedly have belonged to an illustrious person, given the richness of its material and sculptural work. Prismatic in shape, wider than it is deep, it is conceived as a miniature architecture, as reflected in the ornamentation. Thus, a continuous moulded entablature has been carved that runs along the four fronts of the urn, resting on the pilasters that are located at the corners and in the centre of the four sides, all of them equal with vegetal capital and fluted shaft, decorated with ovas on its upper part and raised on a stepped base. The four fronts are organized as facades, each with two semicircular arches, again moulded, housed under the lintel and raised on smaller pilasters, similar to the main ones but with a simpler capital, built with stepped mouldings - the ornamental motif that unifies the entire architectural design. The layout of the fake building seeks the illusion of three-dimensionality, superimposing the larger pilasters on the smaller ones and enhancing the play of perspective with the staggering of the bases. The fronts of the urn are the shorter sides, in this case both with the same ornamental scheme: under the arches there are two bust portraits, one male and one female, representing a couple whose image is repeated on both fronts. The busts are raised on small pedestals, again tiered, and above them hang, on chains, oscillas in the form of a pelta (Greek shield in the shape of a crescent moon), a common ornamental motif in the intercolumniation of the peristyles of the Roman house. The busts show a clear disproportion between the size of the torso and that of the face, the latter worked in a larger and richly detailed relief, reflecting a clear portrait intention. The man's hair is arranged in an orderly, slightly asymmetrical manner, with the wavy locks combed forward, and the woman appears with her hair pulled back, forming soft waves around her face. The portraits share several stylistic features: a face with almond-shaped eyes with double eyelids, full, slightly pursed lips, a relaxed brow, a straight nose and ears placed frontally. Furthermore, they are worked with a type of carving that seeks to enhance the relief and the chiaroscuro effects, even using the trepan for details such as the corners of the lips or the inside of the ears. The man's face is characterised by the dimple in his chin, and shows a mature age, with wrinkles on his forehead and furrows on both sides of his mouth. His wife's face has softer features, with a wider nose and full lips and cheeks, although the nasolabial furrows appear slightly indicated, again indicating her maturity. Although the layout of both fronts is identical, the artist has introduced a slight variation: in one of them the man is on the left and the woman on the right, while on the opposite side the location of the busts is reversed. On the sides of the urn the decorative scheme is maintained, with the same set of semicircular arches and superimposed pilasters. Here, however, the portraits of the couple are presented as hermas, one male and one female, reproducing the same faces on the fronts of the piece. In this case, the woman is on the left in both cases, and the man on the right. The herma is a sculptural typology of archaic Greek origin, a pillar topped by a bust that originally represented the god Hermes or Dionysus, and whose erect phallus was carved on the front of the pillar as a symbol of fertility and also of defence against evil. These figurative pillars were originally placed in rural areas to delimit roads and properties, with an apotropaic meaning. In Rome, the hermai lost their original meaning when they were incorporated into the gardens of the large domus as a purely aesthetic element, topped by busts of various characters and preferably placed in the peristyles, such as the aforementioned oscilla. In fact, the appearance of both these and the hermai allows us to deduce that the urn symbolically represents a private space, the garden atrium of the deceased's family home. The National Archaeological Museum in Madrid preserves an urn close to the piece under study, with a similar architectural scheme and also with male and female hermas on the long sides, although it differs in the fronts, which house images related to the underworld (fig. 1). However, this is an uncommon decoration in Roman funerary art; although the portrait of the deceased and his family and the architectural conception of the cinerary urn are recurrent (fig. 2), the articulation of both themes in a unitary image, with the incorporation of the effigies - and not the characters they represent - as part of the ornamentation of the scenery, is highly original. The lid of the urn, designed as a hipped roof in accordance with the general architectural concept, is decorated with stepped mouldings carved in relief. The lower one houses a motif of thick lanceolate leaves, arranged in groups of three to form an open pattern that is repeated. The upper, narrower one, shows a border of flat acanthus leaves. Between the two is a third, narrower, cord-shaped separation moulding. The upper plane of the lid repeats the acanthus leaf motif on the long sides, in this case in a larger size and with the leaves arranged staggered to create a greater impression of volume. Between these two bands of acanthus leaves is a rectangular inclined depression, whose rough surface indicates that it could have served as a base for an additional element, perhaps a reclining portrait of the deceased following the Etruscan tradition (fig. 3). On one side of the lid there is a circular hole intended to receive libations, offerings of wine and oil intended for the deceased. The most widespread Roman funeral rite between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD began with a private mourning at home, after which the body was taken in procession to the cemetery, where it was placed on a pyre surrounded by offerings and personal objects. The name of the deceased was then pronounced aloud, and his eyes were opened for the last time. Once the fire had consumed both the body and the offerings, the ashes were collected, washed with wine and placed in the cinerary urn, which was placed in a niche in the family tomb. In the early days of Roman civilization, the most common practice was burial, but with the passage of time cremation became the most widely used formula from the end of the Republican era and especially between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. In fact, Tacitus, in the 1st century, refers to cremation as Romanus mos, that is, “the Roman way.” Inhumation was more common among slaves and the poor, as it was a less expensive and considerably faster method. Over time, this formula would replace cremation throughout the empire, in parallel with the decline of Roman cities and the changes in the religious sphere that marked the end of the Ancient Age. Roman funerary art included sarcophagi, cinerary urns and altars for the burial of bodies or ashes, and also commemorative constructions such as mausoleums and steles. The use of each type varied over time, and altars and cinerary urns would in fact lose importance throughout the 2nd century AD, in favour of sarcophagi. However, the decoration of funerary monuments would maintain a continuous flow, including from simply ornamental motifs such as garlands or animal heads to highly complex mythological scenes. BIBLIOGRAPHY: - HELLER, J. “Burial Customs of the Romans”. The Classical Weekly, vol. 25, no. 24. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1932. - HOPE, V. M. Roman Death. The Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome. Continuum. 2009. - KOORTBOJIAN, M. Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi. University of California Press. 1993. - PEARCE, J. Death and burial in the Roman Age. Oxford University Press. 2020. PARALLELS: Fig. 1 Cinerary urn. Rome, Roman Empire, s. I AD Marble, 29 x 29 x 28.5 cm. National Archaeological Museum, Madrid, inv. 2843. Fig. 1 Cinerary urn. Rome, Roman Empire, s. I AD Marble, 29 x 29 x 28.5 cm. National Archaeological Museum, Madrid, inv. 2843. Fig. 2 Cinerary urn with portrait of the spouses Vitalis and Vernasia Ciclas. Rome, Roman Empire, 1st century AD. Marble, 50.8 x 34.29 cm. British Museum, London, inv. 1805,0703.158. Fig. 3 Cinerary urn cover with reclining portrait. Rome, Roman Empire, s. II AD Marble, 25 x 63 x 43 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. Ma 1494. Notes: - The piece includes authenticity certificate. - The piece includes Spanish Export License (Passport for European Union) - If the piece is destined outside the European Union a substitution of the export permit should be requested, can take between 1-2 weeks maximum. - The seller guarantees that he acquired this piece according to all national and international laws related to the ownership of cultural property. Provenance statement seen by Catawiki. #CollectorsFair25