SEAN P. BURRUS A JEWISH CHILD’S PORTRAIT? THE KLINE SARCOPHAGUS OF MONTEVERDE AND JEWISH FUNERARY PORTRAITURE IN ROME Abstract ect of reconstructing Jewish attitudes towards visual This article examines the evidence for the use of portrait culture in the Roman world.1 This category of ancient sculpture on sarcophagi belonging to members of the Jewish visual culture has received scant attention compared community of Rome. The use of the “learned figure” motif, to other types of figural imagery discovered in Jewish commonly employed in Roman sarcophagus portraiture contexts. Evidence of Jewish portraiture has most often and by Jewish patrons, is highlighted, and possible creative been dismissed as intrusive, mentioned only in passing, appropriations of the trope in Jewish contexts are raised. It or otherwise swept under the rug.2 The field has typi- is further argued that, among Jewish sarcophagus patrons, cally been preoccupied with the more overt examples the decision to include funerary portraiture went hand in of acculturation, especially Jewish uses of “pagan” sym- hand with the decision to adopt popular and conventional bols and motifs. While a tombstone reused by Jewish Roman styles and motifs, and to engage Roman cultural and visual resources. In other words, Jewish patrons who chose patrons and bearing a couple’s portrait and an incised sarcophagi with portraits also seem to have been the readiest menorah from Pannonia has received some welcome to make use of the visual resources of Roman funerary culture attention, the evidence of portrait sculpture on the to orchestrate self-narratives on their sarcophagi. Finally, it sarcophagi belonging to Jewish patrons of Rome has is cautioned that while the limited examples ( five) suggest a yet to be brought into the conversation about Jewish mastery of Roman culture and a correspondingly high degree attitudes towards visual culture in the Roman world.3 of acculturation among certain Jewish patrons, we should be In this article therefore, I examine five fragmentary wary of reading such sarcophagi as evidence of certain Jews sarcophagi with portrait sculpture discovered in the abandoning a Jewish identity in favor of a Roman one—or Jewish catacombs of Rome. the Jewish community in favor of the Roman polis and its civic In the city of Rome portraiture was created in a structures—as narratives of funerary art never capture the variety of media and contexts both public and private totality of the deceased’s identity. since at least the fourth century B.C.E.4 Whether used on sarcophagi, or in other civic or private contexts, Introduction portraits were “intended to promulgate the stature and merits of their subjects.”5 In other words, portraits were An analysis of Jewish portrait sculpture in Late Antiq- used as a way of emphasizing both the social stand- uity has an important role to play in the ongoing proj- ing and the character of the individual. They were a 1 Important contributions to this evaluation include especially: Facts in the Third Century,” Eretz-Israel 5 (1958): 189–205 (in J. M. Baumgarten, “Art in the Synagogue: Some Talmudic Views,” Hebrew); Zeev Weiss, “Images and Figural Representations in the in The Synagogue: Studies in Origins, Archaeology and Architecture, Urban Galilee: Defining Limits in Times of Shifting Borders,” in ed. J Gutmann (New York: KTAV, 1975); Yaron Eliav, “Viewing the The Image and Its Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity ed. Sarah Pearce Sculptural Environment: Shaping the Second Commandment,” (Oxford: Journal Of Jewish Studies, 2013). in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, vol. 3, ed. 2 Levine, Visual Judaism, 152. Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002); Steven Fine, Art 3 Steven Fine, “How Do You Know a Jew When You See One? and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Reflections on Jewish Costume in the Roman World,” in Fashioning Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Lee Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce, ed. L. Greenspoon (West I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2013). Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Sarah Pearce, 4 Paul Zanker, Roman Portraits: Sculptures in Stone and Bronze The Image and Its Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity, Journal of Jewish (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 9. The tradition Studies Supplement Series (Oxford: Journal Of Jewish Studies, 2013); of Roman portrait sculpture probably emerged out of sustained Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E cross-cultural contact with Greeks in the late 4th century B.C.E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); E. E. Urbach, “The 5 Zanker, Roman Portraits, 1. Laws of Idolatry in the Light of the Historical and Archaeological © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 IMAGES Also available online—brill.com/ima DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340077 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 02:08:59AM via free access 4 Sean P. Burrus means of elite display that could be paired with the “an image of a portrait.”12 For this reason, portraits sarcophagus form—itself a powerful vehicle for the on Roman sarcophagi reveal much more about the display of status and self—to create a particularly cultural identity and social status of the patron than potent (re)presentation of the individual. they do their individual personality, tastes or beliefs. In fact, Roman sarcophagi were an especially fitting Elements such as facial expressions, hairstyles and medium for portrait sculpture, as they were overwhelm- clothing in Roman funerary portraits serve more to ingly utilized as spaces for visually expressing identity connect the individual to Roman society and culture and commemorating the deceased; for presenting “nar- than to individuate them. In short, Roman funerary art ratives of the self.”6 One of the characteristic features served first and foremost as a way of commemorating of sarcophagi produced in Rome is the inclusion of a and immortalizing the social identity of the deceased, portrait, especially from the third century C.E. on. In and to demonstrate that the interred individual was a this period, the sarcophagus industry experienced what successful Roman citizen as measured against popular has been referred to as a “portrait boom,” and portrait conceptions of social status and achievement. sculpture was featured on a wide variety of sarcophagus In light of this, the evidence for the use of portrait styles, from simple strigilar sarcophagi to narrative sculpture on Jewish sarcophagi examined below is mythological sarcophagi.7 On at least one level, the revealing not only for the study of the variety of Jew- faces of these Roman portraits were intended to reflect ish attitudes towards visual culture, but also for the the deceased individual.8 While the bodies and busts cultural experience of wealthy Jewish citizens and could be pre-carved, the faces were typically carved sarcophagus patrons in Rome. The portrait styles after the sale.9 At the same time, Roman portraits were and sarcophagi they chose reflected the latest in Roman rarely if ever conceived of as realistic likenesses of the funerary fashions. Jewish patrons who opted for por- deceased.10 Birk has argued that portraits on sarcophagi traiture also do not seem to have cared to mark their were intended as symbolic images meant to represent Jewish identity on their sarcophagi by means of Jewish the character and virtues of the deceased and to pre- symbols. Where Jewish ritual symbols appeared with serve their memory.11 This was accomplished by vari- little rhyme or reason on other sarcophagi and many ous means, such as through the inclusion of elements artifacts from the Jewish catacombs of Rome, the por- that indicated the deceased’s social identity (tools of trait sarcophagi examined here contain no such sym- the trade, hairstyle, dress, etc.) or via association with bols. Of course, not all Roman Jews opted to include mythological or allegorical motifs. portrait sculpture on their sarcophagi—it must have Rather than being a true portrait then, the symbolic been a considerably expensive customization—and nature of the sculptural program and its idealized rep- there is evidence in at least one example that portrait resentation of the individual renders it, in Birk’s words, sculpture was purposefully avoided. 6 Björn C. Ewald, “Myth and Visual Narrative in the Second and exquisitely carved figures but blank faces to prove the point; Sophistic: A Comparative Approach,” in Life, Death and Representa- Birk’s catalog counts 200 such examples. See Birk, Depicting the tion: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, ed. Jaś Elsner and Janet Dead, 199. Moreover, as Birk explains, “the generic bust meant that Huskinson (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 261–307. the sarcophagus could be purchased for either a man or a woman,” 7 Stine Birk, Depicting the Dead: Self-Representation and it was typically “asexual.” Birk, Depicting the Dead, 17. Commemoration on Roman Sarcophagi with Portraits (Aarhus: 9 Zanker, Roman Portraits, 13–14. Zanker has suggested that in Aarhus University Press, 2013), 10–14. See also Zahra Newby, Roman portrait sculpture, the face was emphasized as a result “In the Guise of Gods and Heroes: Portrait Heads on Roman of a cultural disposition to “read the subject’s personalities and Mythological Sarcophagi,” in Elsner and Huskinson, Life, Death capabilities in faces.” Through the faces on portrait sculptures, and Representation, 192–193. Newby further suggests that this Zanker writes, ancient viewers could “get to know them personally” widespread appeal was concurrent across types, beginning in and “communicated with them.” the latter half of the second century C.E. 10 As indicated not only by the lack of individuality in the 8 The bodies or busts were typically carved in advance, one features and expressions of Roman funerary portraits, but also by aspect of the mass-market culture that came to prevail in the the reuse of some sarcophagi without recarving of the features.