• Tuesday 18 March - Panel VIII

Marriage' portraits in the funerary art of third and fourth-century Rome:
the choice of Christian patrons

Sharon M. Salvadori

In keeping with tradition, many early Christian patrons commissioned funerary monuments that included portraits of the deceased. It is not always possible to identify the religious affiliation of the patrons, for the portraits often appear in conjunction with a visual repertoire that is non-denominational, common to late antique funerary art as a whole. Yet there are a sufficient number juxtaposed with biblical pictorial narratives or a recognizably Christian epitaph to show that Christians favored some portrait-types at the expense of others. This paper focuses on the double portraits of husband and wife preferred by Christians in late antique Rome.

Late antique 'marriage' portraits drew on earlier Roman image-types whose signifiers were still widely recognized and understood by contemporaries. Christians in late antiquity, like their non-Christian peers, presumably deployed this repertoire because its meaning/s were in harmony with those they wished to convey. The semantic context for the interpretation of the 'marriage' portraits favored by Christians is thus, arguably, Roman rather than Christian (or pagan). Indeed, one of the most recurrent 'marriage' portrait types commissioned by Christians in Rome was also very popular among contemporary non-Christians. It is, moreover, a visualization of the Roman marriage ideal, indicating that many Christian patrons shared the same understanding of what constituted an ideal marriage as their non-Christian peers. Yet that there is more involved is suggested by the fact that one of the most popular images of the Roman marriage ideal available on the late antique art market was not popular among Christians and, conversely, that one of the 'marriage' portrait types they did favor, was seemingly never commissioned by non-Christians in the Urbs.

Pagans and Jews in the Roman world viewed human sexuality as a problematic aspect of human behavior. Nevertheless, they maintained that when harnessed to procreation within the institution of marriage, it was a civic, moral and even a religious duty; it was accepted, expected and encouraged for it ensured the continuation of the family line and hence of society itself. Mainstream Christian doctrine also argued that the sexual union of man and woman in wedlock for the purpose of procreation was virtuous.

Yet because it linked sexual intercourse to the Fall and the consequent loss of an original human immortality in God, it concurrently upheld celibacy as the new social ideal and the surest means to reverse the legacy of the first transgression. The idealization of celibacy was an implicit - and hardly superficial - devaluation of marriage, for it did away with the sexual bonding that enabled marriage's raison d'être and thus also with its ascribed virtue. Not surprisingly, this Janus-faced teaching engendered debate and controversy within many early Christian communities. Like a number of other images popular among contemporary Christians- Adam and Eve depicted naked and covering their genitals at the Fall may stand for all- the 'marriage' portraits favored by Christian patrons in late antique Rome may be defined as the visual interlocutors in the discourse linking sexuality and salvation.

Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

sqs8676@nyu.edu