Ores sarcophagus

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As Orestsarkophag ( Orestes sarcophagus ) Roman are stone sarcophagi from the 2nd century AD. AD designated., The reliefs depicting scenes from the classic tragedies of Oresttrilogie of Aeschylus ( Oresteia ) and Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides show. In the representations on the sarcophagus reliefs, which show the murder of Aigisthus and Clytaimnestra , traditional elements of the myth are taken up, but presented from a different perspective.

Orestesarcophagus in the Vatican Galleria dei Candelabri (Inv.2513.)

Art historical background

In late Republican times and during the Julian-Claudian dynasty , cremation was the rule in Rome, while under the reign of Trajan (98–117) burial using ornate stone sarcophagi, which was already practiced in early Republican times, became increasingly widespread. Since it was customary in Italy to place the sarcophagus against a wall or in a niche in the tomb, the back often remained smooth.

At the beginning of the 2nd century AD, pictures of Greek myths were used as relief decoration instead of the previously usual floral or emblematic motifs to decorate the front and front sides. The lid also had a narrow, relief-decorated stripe on the front. When choosing the subject , one could fall back on famous literary sources with the classic tragedies of Aeschylus' Oresty and Iphigenia among the Taurians of Euripides. The Orestsarcophagi can accordingly be divided into two thematically separate groups. On the sarcophagi of the first group is the murder of Aigisthus and Clytaimnestra, on which the second shows the episodes of the recovery of Iphigenia in Tauris, twelve motifs recur on the bas-reliefs in a typologically highly standardized form. The dating of these sarcophagi is fairly consistent in research. All belong to the period from 140 to around 180 AD. Despite the clear thematic separation, there is an overlap in the pictorial repertoire of both groups. For the middle scene, Orestes seeing the furies after the matricide, a cycle of paintings by Theon of Samos from the second half of the 4th century BC is used. Chr. Accepted as a template. However, the pictures are no longer preserved. It is not known which poetry the painter followed. To this day, the Orestes sarcophagi are considered primarily for their source value for illustrations of dramatic scenes.

Interpretation of the subject

Orestes in Delphi, Arthur D. Trendall , Red- Figure Vase from Pestum , No. 2/244, pl. 91 (British Museum)

The oldest known Roman Orestes sarcophagi are the specimens in Madrid from the Abbey of Santa María de Defesa Brava in Husillos in northwestern Spain and the two specimens from Rome itself in the Palazzo Giustiniani and in the Museo Pio-Clementino (Galleria dei Candelabri). In addition, there are numerous, typologically closely related sarcophagus reliefs. The subject remained unexplained for a long time. A first attempt at interpretation comes from the Spanish historian Ambrosio de Morales in the 16th century . He suspected that the sarcophagus relief of Husillos depicts the murder of Horatiern and Curiatiern , an event from the early history of Rome. Johann Joachim Winckelmann was the first to propose a mythological interpretation in the Monumenti inediti in 1767 : the murder of Agamemnon and Kassandra by Aigisthus and Klytaimnestra . But in the spring of 1786 Arnold Heeren , a 27-year-old with a doctorate in history, found the more plausible and still generally accepted interpretation of the subject during a study trip to Italy: the sarcophagus relief shows scenes from the Oresty of Aeschylus. In a work he published in the summer of the same year, he made the Orestes sarcophagus in the Museo Pio Clementino an exemplary case in which one “can show, step by step, that the artist followed in the footsteps of the poet.” After examining the theses Winckelmanns, Heeren developed his own interpretation of the sarcophagus relief and justified it with passages from two parts of the Oresty , the Choephores and the Eumenides . Unlike later scholars of the 19th century, Heeren does not postulate a fundamental dependence of the visual arts on literature, but allows artists creative freedom.

Classification of the Ores sarcophagi

Carl Robert presented the first systematic investigation and classification of the Ores sarcophagi in 1890 with the second volume of the corpus of the ancient sarcophagus reliefs - Part II: Mythological Cycles (ASR II), which is still regarded today as the first scientifically usable secondary source on the Ores sarcophagus. Set in the form of a corpus work , Robert's typological classification of the pieces as well as his strongly text-related approach to interpretation quickly established itself. Every scene and almost every character is assigned a fixed drama. Although he prefers a complete and detailed bibliography to the review of the pieces, he does not present the research discussion. It is characteristic of Robert that he largely confines himself to an identification with Aeschylean dramatic scenes when treating the reliefs.

Textual interpretation of the sarcophagi

Casts of the Ores sarcophagus from the Vatican Galleria dei Candelabri , set up in the Neustrelitz palace gardens

The Orestes sarcophagi, which depict the murder of Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra - Ruth Bielfeldt calls them murder sarcophagi - are classified into two classes by Carl Robert in the Corpus (ASR II) and are described in detail. In his opinion, the representations on the sarcophagi of the second class offer precise illustrations of the text of Aeschylus' Oresty: “The arrangement of the scenes is the same for all of them. The focus is always on the final scene from the Choephores of Aeschylus, where Orestes sees the approaching furies after the completed matricide (verses 973-979). This is followed on the left by the depiction of the tomb of Agamemnon , but in two ways; now only the lonely burial mound with the three sleeping furies appears, now the shadow of Agamemnon standing in the open tomb door , to whom Orestes and Pylades approach in adoration , while a fury sleeps next to the tomb , a free illustration to the prologue of the Choephores (verses 1– 9). On the right, Orestes appears regularly in Delphi, stepping over the sleeping fury, after the prologue of the Eumenids and somewhat varied (verses 34–93). Otherwise either the decorative sphinxes appear on the narrow sides , now scenes from the same myth freely invented by the sarcophagus workers, now scenes from the later part of the recovery of Iphigenia . "

In a text-based interpretation of the reliefs on the basis of the recognition of literary motifs, however, contradictions arise between the Aeschylus text and the images on the sarcophagi. So z. For example, in the scene on the right, Orestes leaving Delphi, there is no question of a representation of the drama in the pictorial representation. The prologue of the Eumenids , spoken by Pythia , the priestess of Apollo at the oracle of Delphi , contains a very clear description of Orestes clasping the altar and seeking protection from a host of furies threatening him (vv. 34-63). Even the motif of Orestes setting out with his sword drawn contradicts the report of Pythia , which portrays the hero as a fugitive anxiously clinging to the omphalos . The fact that only one of the pack of furies is left on the Ores sarcophagus, who also appears as a graceful young woman, is also a violation of Aeschylus that has been much criticized in research. The moment of departure from Delphi to Athens after Apollo's atonement of Orestes is also not the subject of the staging in the drama. Only from the dialogue between Apollo and Orestes , in which the god assures the hunted of his support, it can be inferred that first Apollo and later Hermes give Orestes a protective escort.

Even the murder deviates from the plot in the drama. This is how two literary representations of the Oresty are named by research, which cannot be reconciled with the picture on the sarcophagus; On the one hand this is the murderous incident not shown on the stage itself and therefore not shown in the drama, on the other hand the scene in which Orestes presents the corpses of the murdered to the people (v. 973 ff.) and a little later for the first time the avengers of his Mother sees (v. 1048 ff.). Nor is the slave crouching behind the Clytaimnestra her, in the Choephores, characterized as loyal and brave servant. He had been sent away shortly before the murder to fetch an ax to defend his mistress. The old nurse of Orest Kilissa is of course on the side of her pupil with Aeschylus. You will hardly recognize her in the terrified old woman on the sarcophagus.

The meeting of Orestes and Pylades with the shadow of Agamemnon, which is only depicted in the scene on the left on the Orestes sarcophagus from the Tomba della Medusa , has no literary equivalent in Oresty . Even Carl Robert writes in the Corpus that it is a free illustration. After the Ores sarcophagus, discovered in the Tomba della Medusa in 1839, became known, a lively discussion began about the understanding of the two different corner scenes of the murder sarcophagus and related to the reading direction of the relief, the meaning of the fury at the grave of Agamemnon, but also the identity of the protagonist (s) in the middle scene. The attempt to reconstruct an "original model" for the two variants of the left scene was unsuccessful, but led to a fundamental reassessment of the Orestsarcophagi in the Palazzo Giustiniani and the Galleria dei Candelabri . The triple group on the left on its sarcophagus relief is now understood as having an independent motif and also as being detached from the scene of Orestes' departure from Delphi on the right. Thus, for these sarcophagi, too, the idea of ​​a real threefold and a chronological reading direction from left to right was established.

The comparison of the image version and the literary scene makes it clear that an illustration as close to the text as possible could not have been the intention of the sarcophagus designer. The story captured in the picture differs significantly from the literary version in its essential features and details. As Ruth Bielfeldt wrote in her monograph Orestes on Roman sarcophagi , the “sarcophagus pictures clearly did not want to be understood as retelling of a literary story. They take up traditional elements of the mythical material, but present it from a different point of view by linking it with motifs obtained from other contexts of understanding: in this way a completely new, 'unheard of' oresty arises on the sarcophagi. "

literature

  • Carl Robert : Orestes . In: Friedrich Matz, Bernard Andreae, Carl Robert (Ed.): The ancient sarcophagus reliefs: Mythological Cycles (ASR II) . G. Grotesche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1890, p. 165-188 ( digitized version ).
  • Ruth Bielfeldt : Orestes on Roman sarcophagi . Ed .: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. 2005, ISBN 3-496-02767-3 ( online [PDF]).
  • Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes in the Medusa grave. An attempt to the viewer . In: Roman communications . tape 110 , 2003, p. 117-150 ( online [PDF]).
  • Ruth Bielfeldt: Antique sarcophagus pictures for Goethe's "demonized humane" Iphigenia; Rome 1786: A mishap about Heeren, Goethe and Lips . In: Horst Bredekamp, ​​Arnold Nesselrath (Hrsg.): Berlin contributions to the afterlife of antiquity . Issue 7, 2005, ISSN  1436-3461 , pp. 163-186 ( online [PDF]).

Web links

  • Aeschylus: Choephores. In: Oresty . gottwein.de, 2019, accessed on July 5, 2019 (Part 2 of the tragedy trilogy, German based on Droysen / Nestle , verses numbered).
  • Aeschylus: Eumenids. In: Oresty . gottwein.de, 2019, accessed on July 5, 2019 (Part 3 of the tragedy trilogy, German based on Droysen / Nestle , verses numbered).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 54 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  2. ^ A b Nancy H. Ramage, Andrew Ramage (Ithaca College & Cornell University): Roman art from Romulus to Constantine . Original edition 1995 Laurence King Publishing, Cologne 1999 (1999 for the German edition) ISBN 3-8290-1720-0 (translation from English: Ulrike Bischoff)
  3. ^ A b Ruth Bielfeldt : Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 15 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 28 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  5. ^ Carl Robert: Corpus of the ancient sarcophagus reliefs II: Mythological Cycles. 1890, p. 165.
  6. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 32 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Sarcófago de la Orestiada de Husillos. Retrieved June 7, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Arachne individual object 131333: Orestsarcophagus Rome, Giustiniani collection. Retrieved June 7, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Arachne individual object 131708: Orestesarcophagus Vatican City State, Musei Vaticani, Galleria dei Candelabri. Retrieved June 7, 2019 .
  10. ^ Arnold Heeren: Commentatio in opus caelatum antiquum Musei Pii Clementini. 1786, p. 1 ff. ( Digitized version ). There were two edited new editions of this publication in German, of which the more recent (Arnold Heeren, Historische Werke, Historische Werke III [1821] 123 ff.) Has been made accessible again in a reprint from 1987.
  11. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Antique sarcophagus pictures for Goethe's "verteufel thumane" Iphigenie. Rome 1786: a mess about Heeren, Goethe and Lips. P. 170 , accessed June 1, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH, p. 35 f. , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  13. ↑ a b c Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH, p. 31 f. , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH, p. 47 , accessed on June 7, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Designation s. Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 31 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  16. ^ A b Carl Robert in the "Corpus of ancient sarcophagus reliefs II: Mythological Cycles" 1890, p. 165.
  17. ↑ a b c Ruth Bielfeldt: Antique sarcophagus pictures for Goethe's "verteufel thumane" Iphigenie. Rome 1786: a mess about Heeren, Goethe and Lips. P. 51 f. , accessed on June 10, 2019 .
  18. ↑ s. Fig. → Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes in the Medusa grave. An attempt to the viewer, Römische Mitteilungen 110, 2003, 117-150. P. 104 , accessed on June 22, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 40 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 42 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  21. ↑ Ruth Bielfeldt: Orestes on Roman sarcophagi (Berlin 2005). P. 53 , accessed June 7, 2019 .