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Article: Ceremonies of the ancients: among the treasures of the collection of classical sculpture at Wilton acquired by the 8th Earl of Pembroke in the 17th and 18th centuries are four marble Roman sarcophagi. As Elizabeth Angelicoussis explains, they embody the Earl's intellectual curiosity as well as his aesthetic discrimination.(ROMAN SARCOPHAGI AT WILTON HOUSE)
- Article from:
- Apollo
- Article date:
- July 1, 2009
- Author:
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Decorated coffins, or sarcophagi, are the most numerous Roman works of art to have survived. (1) They often escaped the destruction that befell more prominent and accessible works of art--especially those made of precious materials. As a result, funerary marbles provide a continuous source for studying the evolution of relief sculpture from the 2nd to the 4th century AD.
Romans of the republic and early empire regarded cremation as the norm, until a revolution in burial customs around the mid-2nd century. Thereafter, inhumation became standard practice, leading to the adoption of sarcophagi, a Greek word meaning 'flesh-eaters', referring to their original ...