WEBVTT 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. 00:00:11.687 --> 00:00:14.221 It's the tomb of Junius Bassus. 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 00:00:20.086 --> 00:00:24.887 in their museum but we're in the Treasury and this is the actual sarcophagus. 00:00:24.887 --> 00:00:31.341 And so Junius Baccus was a Roman prefect in around the mid-fourth century. 00:00:31.341 --> 00:00:34.154 Right, we know that he had his position in 359. 00:00:34.154 --> 00:00:38.902 So we're looking at a very early moment, soon after Constantine has made it 00:00:38.902 --> 00:00:41.921 legitimate to be a Christian in the Roman Empire 00:00:41.921 --> 00:00:48.337 and Constantine is in the process of making Christianity or leading towards Christianity becoming the 00:00:48.337 --> 00:00:52.371 official religion of the Roman Empire which will happen in the end of the 300s. 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 00:00:59.041 --> 00:01:01.336 the iconography of the Christian tradition. 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 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-- 00:01:13.229 --> 00:01:15.264 It looks likely to be Peter and Paul, yes. 00:01:15.264 --> 00:01:19.937 But he looks very youthful, like a young philosopher teacher. 00:01:19.937 --> 00:01:22.257 He's even holding a scroll in his hand-- 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 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 00:01:34.102 --> 00:01:38.299 and he's got a beard. Here he is represented very youthful, 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, 00:01:44.254 --> 00:01:48.020 his left leg comes forward a little bit, his head is slightly turned. 00:01:48.020 --> 00:01:51.570 And he's got his foot above an image of a river god 00:01:51.570 --> 00:01:54.787 Which is interesting because it shows Christianity surmounting the old 00:01:54.787 --> 00:01:57.093 Polytheistic traditions of ancient Romans-- 00:01:57.093 --> 00:02:05.354 Using the iconography of the ancient Roman, pagan, art in a new Christian context. 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 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-- 00:02:18.002 --> 00:02:18.944 Exactly. 00:02:18.944 --> 00:02:23.887 --they hadn't yet really been constructed and accepted so this is a very flexible moment. 00:02:23.887 --> 00:02:28.269 Right, this iconography is being developed. And here he looks like pagan figure in a way. 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 00:02:34.394 --> 00:02:38.637 because this sculpture is really showing a pretty highpitched naturalism 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, 00:02:43.937 --> 00:02:47.323 and even some of the emotional attributes of the figures. 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. 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. 00:02:59.837 --> 00:03:04.560 The bodies are starting to be a little bit on the stubby side. 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:06.821 So it's a very interesting transitional moment. 00:03:06.821 --> 00:03:11.056 We see some other scenes from the bible and we're seeing early expressions of it 00:03:11.056 --> 00:03:16.716 here but these are ways of representing these scenes that will become very familiar to us. 00:03:16.716 --> 00:03:19.753 We have Adam and Eve on the lower register-- 00:03:19.753 --> 00:03:26.471 and also other Old Testament scenes that would've prefigured the events in Christ's life. 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 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 00:03:40.336 --> 00:03:45.134 is a fulfillment of the prophecy and the events of the Old Testament. 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 00:03:51.492 --> 00:03:54.220 for the tellling of these critical stories. 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 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 00:04:05.756 --> 00:04:12.796 the marble ground. And I love these columns with capitals and bringing together of the 00:04:12.796 --> 00:04:15.457 classical and the beginnings of the Christian.