1 00:00:06,189 --> 00:00:11,687 We're in St Peter's Basilica and we're looking at a famous early Christian sarcophagus. 2 00:00:11,687 --> 00:00:14,221 It's the tomb of Junius Bassus. 3 00:00:14,221 --> 00:00:20,086 Now it's a little complicated because what people generally see is the copy that the Vatican has 4 00:00:20,086 --> 00:00:24,887 in their museum but we're in the Treasury and this is the actual sarcophagus. 5 00:00:24,887 --> 00:00:31,341 And so Junius Baccus was a Roman prefect in around the mid-fourth century. 6 00:00:31,341 --> 00:00:34,154 Right, we know that he had his position in 359. 7 00:00:34,154 --> 00:00:38,902 So we're looking at a very early moment, soon after Constantine has made it 8 00:00:38,902 --> 00:00:41,921 legitimate to be a Christian in the Roman Empire 9 00:00:41,921 --> 00:00:48,337 and Constantine is in the process of making Christianity or leading towards Christianity becoming the 10 00:00:48,337 --> 00:00:52,371 official religion of the Roman Empire which will happen in the end of the 300s. 11 00:00:52,371 --> 00:00:59,041 So this is an early example then of a kind of openness and really magnificenct rendering of 12 00:00:59,041 --> 00:01:01,336 the iconography of the Christian tradition. 13 00:01:01,336 --> 00:01:05,854 Right, and what's really interesting is that it doesn't look the way we expect it to, in a way because 14 00:01:05,854 --> 00:01:13,229 Christ is here in the center represented with probably Peter and Paul, the two figures on either side of them-- 15 00:01:13,229 --> 00:01:15,264 It looks likely to be Peter and Paul, yes. 16 00:01:15,264 --> 00:01:19,937 But he looks very youthful, like a young philosopher teacher. 17 00:01:19,937 --> 00:01:22,257 He's even holding a scroll in his hand-- 18 00:01:22,257 --> 00:01:29,303 And he's seated and frontal, though not entirely frontal. So I guess what I'm saying is that things 19 00:01:29,303 --> 00:01:34,102 that we normally associate with representations of Christ where he looks like an emperor, he's older 20 00:01:34,102 --> 00:01:38,299 and he's got a beard. Here he is represented very youthful, 21 00:01:38,299 --> 00:01:44,254 although he's seated and frontal, he does have a kind of naturalism and movement to his body, 22 00:01:44,254 --> 00:01:48,020 his left leg comes forward a little bit, his head is slightly turned. 23 00:01:48,020 --> 00:01:51,570 And he's got his foot above an image of a river god 24 00:01:51,570 --> 00:01:54,787 Which is interesting because it shows Christianity surmounting the old 25 00:01:54,787 --> 00:01:57,093 Polytheistic traditions of ancient Romans-- 26 00:01:57,093 --> 00:02:05,354 Using the iconography of the ancient Roman, pagan, art in a new Christian context. 27 00:02:05,354 --> 00:02:12,177 I really am interested by the point you made earlier about Christ not fulfilling the physical attributes 28 00:02:12,177 --> 00:02:18,002 that we come to expect. And this is so early that in a sense, those traditions hadn't yet developed-- 29 00:02:18,002 --> 00:02:18,944 Exactly. 30 00:02:18,944 --> 00:02:23,887 --they hadn't yet really been constructed and accepted so this is a very flexible moment. 31 00:02:23,887 --> 00:02:28,269 Right, this iconography is being developed. And here he looks like pagan figure in a way. 32 00:02:28,269 --> 00:02:34,394 That's certainly true because of the classical garb that he wears. And it's interesting stylistically 33 00:02:34,394 --> 00:02:38,637 because this sculpture is really showing a pretty highpitched naturalism 34 00:02:38,637 --> 00:02:43,937 in terms of the rendering of the bodies, the contrapposto that we see the figures standing in, 35 00:02:43,937 --> 00:02:47,323 and even some of the emotional attributes of the figures. 36 00:02:47,323 --> 00:02:53,055 There is a kind of naturalism although we see the beginnings of a kind of early Christian style. 37 00:02:53,055 --> 00:02:59,837 There are some hints of what's to come. The heads are a little bit too large for the bodies. 38 00:02:59,837 --> 00:03:04,560 The bodies are starting to be a little bit on the stubby side. 39 00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:06,821 So it's a very interesting transitional moment. 40 00:03:06,821 --> 00:03:11,056 We see some other scenes from the bible and we're seeing early expressions of it 41 00:03:11,056 --> 00:03:16,716 here but these are ways of representing these scenes that will become very familiar to us. 42 00:03:16,716 --> 00:03:19,753 We have Adam and Eve on the lower register-- 43 00:03:19,753 --> 00:03:26,471 and also other Old Testament scenes that would've prefigured the events in Christ's life. 44 00:03:26,471 --> 00:03:32,610 So that idea of saying that events in the Old Testament such as the sacrifice of Isaac prefigured 45 00:03:32,610 --> 00:03:40,336 Christ's own sacrifice for the salvation of mankind so that way of saying that Christ's life 46 00:03:40,336 --> 00:03:45,134 is a fulfillment of the prophecy and the events of the Old Testament. 47 00:03:45,134 --> 00:03:51,492 What we're witnessing here is the invention of a new iconography, the invention of a new visual language 48 00:03:51,492 --> 00:03:54,220 for the tellling of these critical stories. 49 00:03:54,220 --> 00:03:59,604 What I'm also noticing is just how deeply carved it is. It is essentially a relief sculpture 50 00:03:59,604 --> 00:04:05,756 but the figures are in very, very high relief. Some of them seem to be separate from 51 00:04:05,756 --> 00:04:12,796 the marble ground. And I love these columns with capitals and bringing together of the 52 00:04:12,796 --> 00:04:15,457 classical and the beginnings of the Christian.