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Rome, March 30th, 2000 - At the meeting of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, held in the throne room of the palace of the Order of the Holy Sepulcre of Jerusalem, Professor Fabrizio Bisconti, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, announced the near completion of the ten-year restoration of all the frescoes covering the walls and vaults of the private burial hypogaeum discovered in 1955 beneath the via Dino Compani on the outskirts of Rome. The sensational discovery of this near-intact series of underground chambers, characterized not only by the singular pictorial programmes incoprporating pagan, Christian and possibly Jewish themes, but also by the monumental sense of negative space of many of the burial chambers, ample and open with rounded vaults, columns flanking burial nieches and standing at corners, and a direct sequence of rooms, some not even fully utilized and decorated. The cubicula in this particular hypogaeum create a dramatic contrast with the the narrow gallery for loculi burials, which leaves from cubiculum G. The hypogaeum was in use over the course of the fourth century A.D. During the presentation of the areas subject to recent restoration, Professor Bisconti described the private nature of the complex, the style of the epigraphy which can be dated to the late period of catacomb burial in Rome, the complete absense of hagiographic evidence on the site, and the hypothesis that the patrons of the hypogaeum were a group of liberti (freedmen) who had contact with members of the high society of Rome, in all prbability, the senatorial class. The variety of sources used for the pictorial programmes testifies to a personal sycrenism of religious traditions of the time. This is no more evident than in the chamber , where a philosopher Christ and the Apostolic College on one wall faces the scene of a "Anatomy Lesson", a series of pagan philosophers gathered around a corpse painted on the back wall of another niche. Common decorative motifs evident in many of the chambers include cosmic and seasonal imagery and motifs developed from art of Hellenistic Alexandria in Egypt. The survival of the pagan imagery and bold narritive style of the scenes from the Old and New Testaments form an important testament to the pluri-cultural dialogue and debate amongst members of the most influential families in Roman society.
Contributed by Jessica Dello Russo
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