News from Rome, February 5th 2002 - It’s not enough to know one’s Bible and Patristic literature to represent themes in early Christian iconography. The early Christian communities had particular ways of representing Jesus Christ, Peter and other figures from the Old and New Testament different from those conventionally used today. Helen Evans, an Affiliated Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and curator of Early Christian and Byzantine Art at the Metropolitain Museum of Art in New York, uses the example of two sarcophagi fragments from the MET collection to distinguish between authentic early Christian art and that "re-created" or restored for the art market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In a detailed discussion of her current work at the American Academy in Rome on the works in the New York museum’s collection, Evans revealed a new value for pieces which may, for the most part, be complete inventions or fantasies of modern sculptors in Rome during the active period for discoveries and international interest in the Roman catacombs as great storehouses for material remains of Early Christian theology and practices. Theologians and archaeologists alike hastened to diffuse the evidence to the public: repertoria like the Jesuit Raffaele Garucci’s Storia di Arte Cristiana (1880) and the two collections Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane (1903) and I Sarcofagi Cristiani Antichi (1929-1936) of Father Josef Wilpert, interpret all Christian art from Scripture, a solution acceptable to both Catholic and Protestant circles at the time.

Antique dealers in Rome who obtained fragments of sarcophagi and other decorated Christian artifacts (Evans suggested perhaps from the archaeologists themselves!) recreated the complete piece in order to attract wealthy art patrons and higher prices. One sarcophagus case (without lid) arrived at Metropolitain collection after decades in the garden of a collector, Walter Jenkins, who purchased the work in Rome in the first decade of the nineteenth century and brought it to the U.S.A. in his luggage. The relief work is a pastiche of styles and scenes passed off for decades as a completely authentic paleo-Christian work of the early fourth century A.D.. A corner fragment with a Petrine miracle of the baptism of Peter’s jailers with water drawn from a rock (nearly identical to scenes of Moses performing the same act) and the arrest of Peter is original, as well as the figures on the sides of Adam and Eve, three Hebrew boys in the furnace and the entire base of the sarcophagus case with a strip of ancient feet, showing the front had been covered with scenes in relief. This authentic part had been already published by P. Rafaelle Garucci, S.J., in his Storia d’Arte Cristiana (1879), plate 314, with the annotation that "nearly all had been lost". .

To contrast the piece’s original and modern sections, Evans compared the piece to a similar example in the Pio-Cristiano museum at the Vatican (Lateran 161). The restoration transformed the all-important figure of Christ on the donkey entering Jerusalem into a serene long hared, bearded preacher, completely recognizable to the Christian collector. Apart from obvious discrepancies in the iconography, meant to underline a continuity in Catholic art over the centuries, Evans noted also clear differences between the execution of the ancient and modern parts. In consultation with sculptor Peter Rockwell, Evans has found the ways in which the modern artist inserted his work into the ancient sarcophagus shell. The deep undercarving in the genuine lower parts arranged on several levels contrasts to the flatter plane used around the figure of Christ, whose head is isolated from the crowded corners with Petrine scenes.

A second artifact from the Met’s paleo-Christian collection, apparently the front section of a sarcophagus lid, is now under close scrutiny by Evans for several unique features which may prove it to be another fake. The central rectangular panel shows a seated figure at center, a youthful Christ with Victorian-like sideburns, but wrapped in a long senatorial toga. Despite the pastoral setting, he is in the seat of judgment, separating eight sheep at left from a herd of five goats at right. It is a "canonical" piece, which would be recognizable and pleasing to the nineteenth-century collector.

Evan’s excellent presentation of the history and value of these pieces is refreshing at a time when much is focused on the classification and chronology of sarcophagi at Rome. It is to be hoped that this information will be available to visitors to the MET collection in New York City, and the work of Evans and her collaborators will lead to significant developments and acquisitions in the museum’s paleo-Christian and Byzantine collection.

Contributed by Jessica Dello Russo