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Framing the Objects We Study: Three Boxes from Late Roman Italy
Author(s): Ja Elsner
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 71 (2008), pp. 21-38
Published by: The Warburg Institute
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FRAMING THE OBJECTS WE STUDY:
THREE BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
J7as
Elsner
J am going to compare three boxes of different materials made in Italy between
the mid- and late fourth century AD. The aim of the enterprise may seem a
traditional art-historical venture into close analysis of a group of related objects
from a single culture and with a relatively coherent set of dates. But my aim is to
test the pervading assumptions of historical coherence and framing that dominate
interpretations in the discipline of art history, since I have chosen a point of cardi
nal cultural change-the transition from pagan to Christian culture-at which so
much of what we (want to) assume, of what we want the evidence to reveal, lies
in the eye of the beholder, the interpretative starting point of the historian. None
of my objects has external documentary evidence that would help in the process
of interpretation, so we are reduced to those fundamental tools of the art-historical
discipline: close observation of form, iconography, and inscriptions on the objects
themselves, combined with whatever integrative contextual frames we may wish to
apply, borrowed from a sense of the 'bigger picture' extrinsic to the objects them
selves. The underlying problem, I trust, will seem relevant beyond the relatively
recondite field of late antique material culture.
All three boxes are lavishly decorated, and their adornment functions to frame
the containers as objects as well as their contents. Moreover, within the visual
discourse constructed by the iconography, various kinds of formal and thematic
framing can be seen to operate. Effectively, we have in all three boxes a variety of
forms of framing in play. Each box is itself a three-dimensional frame, a container
for something, which is kept inside the box. The decoration's primary function is
to validate through imagery the box's contents, whose importance might be said to
be primary, but which would not be identifiable without the framing iconography's
intense, even excessive, visual scene-setting, coupled (in two cases of the three)
with some interesting inscriptions.' In effect, the iconographic and formal choices
made in the framing of my objects may serve as a material commentary on the art
historical practice of framing the works of art we discuss in a given historical or
cultural context. The relationship of that context to the specific examples we discuss
in detail, and the ways we construct what is constitutive and meaningful about
the context, are issues in my view insufficiently addressed or worried about in the
broader discipline of art history as practised today.
I.
J. Eisner,
Art and the Roman Viewer. The Trans
formation of
Art
from
the
Pagan
World to
Christianity,
Cambridge 1995, pp. 283-84.
2I
JOURNAL OFTHE WARBURG AND COURTAULD INSTITUTES, LXXI, 2008
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22 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
_ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'
i. Vatican
City,
Museo Petriano, Sarcophagus
of
Junius Bassus, marble, dated
by inscription
to
359 AD, front
and remains of the lid (Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)
The three boxes in question are as follows. First, we have the marble sarco
phagus of Junius Bassus (243
X
I44
X
I4I cm high, excluding the lid, which is frag
mentary but has a height of 40 cm even in its current state, suggesting an original
total height of as much as 200 cm) (Figs I-3). It was used (and, we may guess, was
specially commissioned) to enclose the body of the city prefect of Rome, who died,
according to the inscription on the upper rim of the coffin's main body, on the
eighth day from the kalends of September (25 August 359), when Eusebius and
Hypatius were consuls.2 It was either made in that year or just before. It is undoubt
edly one of the most impressive and accomplished items of mid-fourth-century
production, made for a patron at the highest pinnacle of the elite. The second box
is the so-called 'Lipsanotheca' from Brescia, an exquisitely carved ivory casket,
probably made in northern Italy and most commonly dated to the 380S AD (32
X
22 X
25 cm high) (Figs 4-5).3 Again, this is a spectacular work of very high quality.
2. 'IVN. BASSVS V. C.
QVI
VIXIT ANNIS
XLII MEN. II IN IPSA PRAEFECTVRA VRBI
NEOFITVS IIT AD DEVM VIII KAL. SEPT.
EVSEBIO ETYPATIO COSS.' See E. S.
Malbon,
The
Iconography of
the
Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus,
Princeton
1990, p. 4.
See also A. de
Waal,
Der Sarko
phag
des
Junius Bassus,
Rome
1900;
F.
Gerke,
Der
Sarkophag
des
Junius Bassus,
Berlin
1936;
K.
Schefold,
'Altchristliche
Bilderzyklen: Bassussarkophag
und
Santa Maria
Maggiore',
Rivista
diArcheologia Cristiana,
xvi, 1939, pp. 291-98;
G. Bovini and H.
Brandenburg,
Repertorium
der Christlich-Antiken
Sarkophage
I. Rom
und
Ostia,
Wiesbaden
1967,
no.
680, pp. 279-83; J.
Gaertner,
'Zur
Deutung
des
Junius-Bassus-Sarko
phages', Jahrbuch
des Deutschen
Arch?ologischen
Insti
tuts, Lxxxiii,
1968, pp. 240-64.
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JAS ELSNER 23
2.
Sarcophagus
of
Junius Bassus, left side (after Gerke, Der
Sarkop hag
des Iunius Bassus, I1936)
3. Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, right side (after Gerke, Der Sarkophag des Iunius Bassus, I936)
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24 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
Its function is uncertain, but it is likely to have been either a reliquary (in which
case it may belong to the very earliest phase of the cult of relics, which is particu
larly associated with Ambrose, bishop of Milan 374-97, and Damasus of Rome,
Pope 366-84),4 or a pyxis (that is to say a container for the blessed Eucharist). The
third box is the Projecta Casket (56
x
43
X
27 cm high, Figs 6-8) from the Esqui
line Treasure, a collection of over sixty items of silverware found in Rome in the
late eighteenth century, and probably made there in the mid- to late fourth century
(dates have varied from the 330s to about 380).5 This box is made of silver with
some gilding, and was clearly valuable, but does not sit at quite the same elevated
level of aristocratic or ecclesiastical patronage as the Bassus sarcophagus or the
Brescia Lipsanotheca.6 However, it is decoratively as rich as they are, and the
inscription on the upper rim of its lid (if it is original to the object) implies that it
celebrates the marriage (possibly the wedding) of its Christian owners, Secundus
and Projecta.7
The three boxes represent three different spheres of experience, with very
different functions. The Bassus sarcophagus is the grandest surviving funerary
object produced in fourth-century Rome, made for the burial of the city's leading
citizen in the vicinity of the tomb of St Peter himself, near which it was discovered
in the late sixteenth century.8 The Brescia Lipsanotheca, whether its intended
contents were relics or the consecrated host, is effectively a liturgical object, a
container of sanctified matter to be used in a context of worship rather than burial.
The Projecta Casket, from the domestic sphere of a Roman elite household, seems
to have held toiletries or bathing materials, and is likely to have been primarily
for the use of women.9 Yet all three boxes show a parallel concern for the visual
3-
C. B.
Tkacz,
The
Key
to the Brescia
Casket,
Notre Dame
2002, p. 19,
nn. 1 and 2.The fundamen
tal literature on the Brescia Casket also includes
J.
Kollwitz,
Die
Lipsanothek
von
Brescia,
Berlin
r933;
R.
Delbrueck,
Probleme der
Lipsanothek
in
Brescia,
Bonn
1952;
W F.
Volbach,
Fr?hchristliche
Kunst,
Munich
1958, p.
61 and
pis 85-89 (still
the best
published
plates);
W F.
Volbach, Elfenarbeiten
der
Sp?tantike
und
des
fr?hen Mittelalters,
Mainz
1976,
no.
107, pp. 77-78;
and
C.Watson,
'The
program
of the Brescia
Casket',
Gesta, xx, 1981, pp. 283-98.
4.
On
Damasus,
see C.
Pietri,
Roma
Cristiana,
2
vols,
Rome
1976, 1, pp. 514-51
and
595-624,
and
J.
Curran, Pagan City
and Christian
Capital.
Rome in the
Fourth
Century,
Oxford
2000, pp. 142-57.
On
Ambrose,
see E.
Dassmann,
'Ambrosius und die
M?rtyrer', Jahr
buch
f?r
Antike und
Christentum, xvm, 1975, pp. 49-68;
and N.
McLynn,
Ambrose
of Milan, Berkeley
and Los
Angeles 1994, pp. 209-17, 226-36,
and
347-60.
For
some
thoughts
on
reliquary caskets,
see G.
Thuno,
Image
and Relic.
Meditating
the Sacred in
Early
Medieval
Rome,
Rome
2002, pp. 53-118.
5.
For c.
330-70,
see K.
J. Shelton,
The
Esquiline
Treasure,
London
1981, pp. 47-55;
and
J. Eisner,
'Visualising
Woman in Late
Antique
Rome: the Case
of the
Projecta Casket',
in
Through
a Glass
Brightly.
Festschrift for
David
Buckton,
ed. C.
Entwistle,
Oxford
2003, pp. 22-36 (22);
for c.
380,
see
E.Will,
'A
propos
du Coffret de
Projecta',
in
Mosa?que.
Recueil d'hom
mages
? Henri
Stem,
Paris
1983, pp. 345-48 (347);
A.
Cameron,
'The Date and Owners of the
Esquiline
Treasure',
American
Journal of Archaeology,
lxxxix,
1985, pp. 135-41 (139-41); J. Dresken-Weiland, Relief
ierte
Tischplatten
aus
theodosianischer
Z^r,
Vatican
1991,
p. 39,
n.
221;
B.
Kiilerich,
Late Fourth
Century
Classi
cism in the Plastic
Arts,
Odense
1993, p. 165.
6. See Kiilerich
(as
in n.
5), p. 164;
Eisner
(as
in
n.
5), p. 24;
and A.
Cameron,
'Observations on the
Distribution and
Ownership
of Late Roman Silver
Plate', Journal of
Roman
Archaeology, v, 1995, pp. 175
85 (185)
on the value of silver.
7.
H.
Buschhausen,
Die
sp?tr?mischen
Metallscrinia
und
fr?hchristlichen Reliquiare I,
Wiener
Byzantini
stische
Studien, ix,
Vienna
1971, pp. 210-14;
Shelton
(as
in n.
5), pp. 31-35;
Eisner
(as
in n.
5) pp.
22 and
24.
8. See A. de
Waal,
'Zur
Chronologie
des Bassus
Sarkophagus
in den Grotten von Sankt
Peter',
R?mische
Quartalschrift,
xxi, 1907, pp. 117-34 (117
20).
9.
See M.
Wyke,
'The Woman in the Mirror: the
Rhetoric of Adornment in the Roman
World',
in
Women in Ancient
Societies,
ed. L.
Archer,
S. Fischler
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JAS ELSNER 25
,_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I
4. Brescia, Museo Cristiano, Lipsanotheca, ivory, perhaps north Italian, perhaps c. 380 AD, top side of lid
(after Kollwitz, Die Lipsanothek von Brescia, 1933)
5. Lipsanotheca, front (Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)
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26 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
6. London, British Museum, Projecta Casket, silver repousse with some gilding, perhaps Rome, mid- to later
fourth century, front of lid and base (CThe British Museum)
adumbration of their function and meaning through decoration, as well as great
care, even a self-conscious reflexivity, in their iconographic choices. The compar
able intensity of interest in framing the dead, the sacred, and the domestic in
fourth-century Roman art is noteworthy. Likewise, the strategy of framing images
from one sphere with those of another (Christian with Jewish in the case of the
Lipsanotheca, Christian with traditional Roman in the Bassus sarcophagus, pagan
mythological with the domestic in the Projecta Casket) is common to all three
objects and hence to the use of imagery across their discrete contexts.
Let us now proceed by exploring the framing strategies of each box in turn.
The front of the Junius Bassus sarcophagus is its most complex face, carved by the
hand of its finest artist,'0 and its iconography is most insistently Christian (Fig. i).
The imagery is laid out in the form of a double-register sarcophagus of columnar
type (as opposed to a continuous frieze), in which each discrete scene is isolated
within an intercolumniation. There is only one other early Christian double-register
columnar sarcophagus in the surviving corpus, so clearly the choice of this form
was exceptional." In the Bassus sarcophagus, the upper tier is arranged as a colon
naded portico with a level entablature, while the lower tier is an arcade of alternating
curved arches and pointed gables. Both these choices are familiar in the range of
surviving sarcophagi, but the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus is unique in combining
them in this way.2 The intercolumnar spaces allow for ten framed scenes-effec
tively relief panels inserted in a complex frame for display-each of which contains
and M.
Wyke,
London
1994, pp. 134-51 (143-44);
Eisner
(as
in n.
5), p. 30.
10. See for
example
E.
Panofsky,
Tomb
Sculpture,
New York
1992, p. 41.
11. This is now in
Saint-Trophime
at Aries. See G.
Koch,
Fr?hchristliche
Sarkophage,
Munich
2000, pp.
284-86;
and B.
Christern-Biesenick, Repertorium
der
Christlich-Antiken
Sarkophage
III.
Frankreich, Algerien,
Tunesien,
Mainz
2003,
no.
118, pp. 72-74
with earlier
bibliography,
where the
sarcophagus
is dated to the
third
quarter
of the
4th century
and attributed to a
workshop
in Rome.
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JAS ELSNER 27
i~~~~~~~~~~~~~
y
7. Projecta Casket, lid with front and sides (icThe British Museum)
8.
Project casket, back of lid and base with
hinges
and handles (iThe British
Museum)
12. The Aries
example
has
alternating
arches and
gables
in both
registers.
A number of
single-register
columnar
sarcophagi
alternate arches or
gables
with a
flat lintel-like
beam, e.g.,
Bovini and
Brandenburg (as
in n.
2),
nos.
49, 57
and
676,
and Christern-Biesenick
(as
in n.
11),
nos. 26 and
53.
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28 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
two or three figures. While the other columns are spirally fluted, the two central
columns in each register are carved with putti harvesting grape-vines (a strongly
Eucharistic iconography in the Christian context).
13 This device marks out the
two central scenes as of particular importance. That below shows Christ's adventus
into Jerusalem, a triumphal moment in his earthly life and the opening event of
his Passion.'4That above has Christ enthroned over a personification (perhaps of
Caelus, the Cosmos) as he hands the Law to Peter and Paul, a representation of
Christ's triumph after the Resurrection with eschatological implications of the
Second Coming.'5 Both these scenes draw on imperial iconographic models,'6 in
keeping with the imagery developed for high officials like Bassus in the later fourth
and fifth centuries.I7
By contrast with frieze sarcophagi, where Christological and Old Testament
subjects merge into each other in the visual field, the framing strategy of columnar
sarcophagi allows each scene to stand in isolation as an image in its own right.
Potentially, it may allow viewers to make a more direct reference to the relevant
scriptural underpinnings of a given scene. In one case-the two intercolumniations
at the right of the upper tier-it is not clear whether two distinct scenes (the arrest
of Christ, and Pilate washing his hands) are represented, or one subject is spread
over two intercolumniations (Christ before Pilate). The choice of an arcade for the
lower register of the Bassus sarcophagus allows the framing of six small scenes in
the spandrels of the arches between the top of the lower register and the base of the
upper register. These scenes, which represent their actors not as human figures but
as lambs, are both much smaller than the intercolumnar panels and in certain
cases ambivalent. Two spandrels, the second from the left and second from the
right, show respectively a lamb striking a rock, and a lamb receiving the Law. Since
Scripture and later tradition report these narratives of both Peter and Moses, it is
not possible to decide which is intended (and it may be that both are meant).'8
A complex ideological argument on the sarcophagus's main face is created
by the typology of Old and NewTestament scenes, as well as references to the lives
and martyrdoms of the Roman apostles, Peter and Paul.I9This face is itself framed
by the imagery chosen for the lid and the two ends of the sarcophagus. The lid
13. E.g.,
Malbon
(as
in n.
2), pp.
120-21.
14.
Malbon
(as
in n.
2), pp. 53-54.
15. Ibid., pp. 49-53.
16. On the
imperial theme,
see for
example
A.
Grabar,
The
Beginnings of
Christian
Art,
London
1967,
pp. 246-49;
S.
MacCormack,
Art and
Ceremony
in
Late
Antiquity, Berkeley 1981, pp. 65-66
and
129-31.
Tom Mathews's failure to discuss these
images
in his
attack on 'the
emperor mystique'
in
early
Christian
art
substantively
vitiates an otherwise useful
(if
over
stated)
corrective. SeeT.
Mathews,
The Clash
of Gods,
Princeton
1993,
with D.
Kinney,
'Review of T.
Matthews,
The Clash
of Gods'',
Studies in
Iconography,
xvi, 1994, pp. 237-42 (239-41).
17. Notably
the
string
of consular
diptychs
dated
between the late
4th
and 6th
centuries, conveniently
collected in Volbach
(as
in n.
3),
nos.
1-65, pp. 28-56;
see also C.
Olovsdotter,
The Consular
Diptychs.
An
Iconological Study, G?teborg 2003,
with recent bibli
ography.
*
18. Malbon
(as
in n.
2), pp. 72-73.
On Peter
striking
the
rock,
a
subject
that
appears
in art before
it enters
early
Christian
literature,
see H.
Kessler,
'Scenes from the Acts of the
Apostles
on Some
Early
Christian
Ivories', Gesta, xvni, 1979, pp. 109-19 (112
13).
19.
See
J. Eisner, 'Inventing
Christian Rome: the
Role of
Early
Christian
Art',
in Rome. The
Cosmopolis,
ed. C. Edwards and
G.Wolf, Cambridge 2003, pp. 71
99 (85-87
and
89).
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JAS ELSNER 29
survives in an extremely fragmentary form, but a series of finds in I942 and I979
(including the bulk of the lid's verse inscription), as well as some acute archaeolo
gical work in joining the fragments, have at least clarified its general iconography.20
Framed between masks of the Sun and Moon, the lid appears to have displayed
a central verse inscription between two figural scenes, whose subject matter, by
contrast with the insistent Christian iconography of the main face, was secular. The
relief on the right was a meal of the dead, including a couch (on which a portrait
of Bassus himself may have been shown reclining), a child, a dog, an instrument
player, and a table laid with wine and fish (which may itself suggest Eucharistic
connotations). The scene on the left is too damaged for convincing identification,
but its likely secular content (say a scene of dextrarum iunctio) is an attractive possi
bility beside its companion funerary meal. The poetic inscription, which forms the
centrepiece of the lid composition, insistently avoids any reference to Christianity
(unlike the prose inscription on the upper rim of the base), and offers instead an
elegiac funerary lament on the decease of the city prefect.2' Its reference to the city
colonnades and the rooftops themselves weeping for Bassus, as well as the Roman
people and the Senate, might prompt renewed consideration of the framing device
of the main body of the sarcophagus with its colonnaded portico and its arcade of
arches.
The reliefs on the ends of the Bassus sarcophagus represent the four seasons,22
although with a Christianising twist (Figs 2-3). The left side (Fig. 2) is wholly
devoted to autumn, with scenes of putti (all winged and most cloaked) harvesting
grapes, bringing them to the wine-press by ox-cart, and pressing them. The upper
band on the right end (Fig. 3) depicts summer, with winged and cloaked putti
harvesting wheat; the lower band on the right end shows six wingless putti in a row,
the first of whom from the left is clothed and carries a basket of olives and an olive
branch (a typical attribute of winter), whereas the others are nude and carry various
attributes of spring. Clearly the emphasis on autumn and summer, with their wine
and bread imagery potentially alluding to the Eucharist, may be read in the light
of the Christian emphasis of the main face. But the general seasonal intimations of
the ends, enclosing the main face of the sarcophagus with a framing device, highly
traditional in Roman art, that suggests notions of cyclical time,23 cannot be ignored.
20. The fundamental
publications
include N.
Himmelmann, Typologische Untersuchungen
an R?mis
chen
Sarkophagreliefs
des
3.
und
4. Jahrhunderts
n.
Chr.,
Mainz
1973;
G.
Daltrop, 'Anpassung
eines
Relieffrag
mentes an den Deckel des Iunius Bassus
Sarkophags',
Rendiconti della
Pontificia
Accademia di
Archeologia,
Li-Lii, 1978-80, pp. 157-70;
W
Wischmeyer,
Die
Tafel
deckel der christlichen
Sarkophage
konstantinischer Zeit
in
Rom,
Rome
1982, pp. 23-36;
R.
Amedick,
Die
Sarkophage
mit
Darstellungen
und Menschenleben IV
Vita
Privata,
Berlin
1991,
no.
300, p. 170.
21. See the discussions of A.
Cameron,
'The
Funeral of
Junius Bassus', Zeitschift f?r Papyrologie
und
Epigraphik,
cxxxix, 2002, pp. 288-92;
and
J. Eisner,
'Art and
Text',
in A
Companion
to Latin
Literature,
ed.
S.
Harrison,
Oxford
2005, pp. 300-18.
Malbon
(as
in
n.
2), pp. 114-16
is
fundamentally
flawed in discussion
of the
inscription,
both
by giving
an incorrect version
of the
original (whose
restorations fail to scan for
instance)
and a
garbled
translation.
22. See G. M. A.
Hanfmann,
The Seasons Sarco
phagus
in Dumbarton
Oaks, Cambridge
MA
1951, pp.
184-85;
Malbon
(as
in n.
2), pp. 99-103;
D.
Bielefeld,
Die Stadtr?mische
Eroten-Sarkophage
II. Weinlese und
Ernteszenen,
Berlin
1997,
no.
217, p. 140.
23.
See
J. Eisner, 'Making Myth
Visual: the Horae
of Philostratus and the Dance of the
Text',
R?mische
Mitteilungen,
evil, 2000, pp. 253-76, esp. pp. 266-76
on seasonal
framing,
and
pp. 272-75
on the Bassus
sarcophagus.
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30 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
Two other sarcophagi, like that of Bassus, have seasonal ends in two registers: the
Three Good Shepherds sarcophagus of about 370 AD, whose iconography is closely
parallel to that of the Bassus sarcophagus and may well have been modeled on
it,14
and a Dionysiac sarcophagus of about 270 AD from Auletta and now in Naples.25
While the iconography of the ends on the Auletta sarcophagus differs from that of
the Bassus and the Three Shepherds sarcophagi (which parallel each other rela
tively closely), its seasons are also represented as putti arranged in two registers,
one register for each of the seasons. Even the specific emphasis on putti harvest
ing wheat and trampling grapes, in which scholarship on the Bassus sarcophagus
has tended to see Christian meaning, is anticipated by numerous non-Christian
sarcophagus ends with these themes from the third and fourth centuries.26
My discussion so far might be characterised as neo-formalist. My aim has been
to show how much care has gone into framing strategies, both within the colon
nading of the main face, and in the relationship of the front with the ends and the
lid. If we turn to issues of iconographic substance and meaning, we might say that
both the lid (with the masks of Sol and Luna) and the main casket of the sarco
phagus (with the seasons on the sides) are framed in a way that implies the cyclical
passing of time, setting their respective imagery in a broader universalising picture
of natural change. The Christianity of the front is firmly framed by both the lid
and the ends in secularising and traditional imagery that alludes to the deep past
with its long-continued culture of seasonal activity and the rituals of life and death.
Christian identities (reaching from the Passion and selected Old Testament ante
cedents, via the apostolic traditions of the city of Rome (in Peter and Paul), to the
baptism of Junius Bassus himself in the near present, as advertised on the inscrip
tion on the rim of the base)27 are enclosed in a careful evocation of Roman tradi
tionalism whose apogee is the poetic inscription in the centre of the lid. Within
its specific historical context of fundamental and substantive cultural change, the
Bassus sarcophagus may be seen as an eloquent visual plea concerning the rise
of the new faith and its relations to the hallowed past. It is a monument to the
integration of profound (often polemically expressed) differences via juxtaposition,
effectively to the toleration of many more aspects of traditional pagan culture than
would ultimately be acceptable. It speaks of a Christianity inserted into the tradi
tional norms, rather than one that extirpates or replaces them.2 What matters for
our purposes here is that it accomplishes all this via the rhetoric of framing. The
formal placing of images on the sarcophagus is not only a matter of aesthetics or
24-
See Bovini and
Brandenburg (as
in n.
2)
no.
29;
Malbon
(as
in n.
2), pp. 99-100
and
102;
and
Bielefeld
(as
in n.
22),
no.
214, pp. 139-40,
whose
dating
I follow here. If the Three Good
Shepherds
sarcophagus
is earlier than the Bassus
sarcophagus,
as for
example
Malbon
(as
in n.
2, pp. 96
and
99)
suggests,
then
clearly
the line of influence would need
to be reversed.
25.
See F.
Matz,
Die
Dionysischen Sarkophage III,
Berlin
1969,
no.
229, pp. 403-04,
and Bielefeld
(as
in
n.
22),
no.
56, p.
no.
26. See Bielefeld
(as
in n.
22),
nos.
6,117,142,174
and
185 (as
well as the
fragmentary
nos.
73
and
154)
with wine
pressing
on both
ends,
and nos.
40,
81 and
140
with wheat
harvesting
at one end and wine
press
ing
at the other.
27.
See Eisner
(as
in n.
19), pp. 85-87.
28. More on this in relation to other
objects
like
the Codex-Calendar of
354
ad in Eisner
(as
in n.
19),
pp. 79-89.
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JAS ELSNER 3I
typology, or of iconographic models and borrowings; rather-at least in the issue
of the relationship of the lid and sides to the main face-formal choices perform
fundamental cultural work.
As far as the Bassus sarcophagus's function as a coffin is concerned, its imagery
may be said to be singularly self-reflexive and even obsessed with the theme of
death. The masks of Sol and Luna on the lid and the seasons on the two ends signal
the temporal frame within which a life and a death must fall. Both the lid and the
base inscriptions are eloquent on Bassus's own death (a particular and personal
death amidst the more universal intimations of the seasons and planets), the poetic
lament on the lid juxtaposed against the precision of the dating and the message
of a Christian baptism on the upper rim of the base.The one lid image that survives
well enough for identification shows the funerary meal: death in the context of
secular living and traditional Roman burial practice. The Christian images on the
main front are singularly focused on dying, with references to the death of Jesus
and the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul (admittedly all of these oblique, through
scenes of arrest rather than death or burial), and the sacrifice of Isaac (admittedly
a death that did not happen), as well as to the images of the triumph over death
(such as Daniel in the Lions' Den, not to speak of the scene of Christ between
Peter and Paul at the centre of the upper register).29 Clearly this imagery is not
only self-referential in relation to the sarcophagus's function as a coffin, but it
represents a calculated argument for the special nature of Christian dying-by
contrast with the secular world of the lid-as transcending death and giving hope
of a new life in the Resurrected Lord.
In turning to the Brescia and Projecta caskets, one difference from the Bassus
sarcophagus is worth emphasising. The sarcophagus of Junius Bassus is a box
designed to contain the body of a man; the two caskets are boxes designed to be
handled by men (and in the case of the Projecta Casket at least, also or even
primarily by women). They are not only very much smaller,30 of course, but their
material functions-how they are handled in relation to the body of a viewer
mean that the chief face is not the front (as in the case of the Bassus sarcophagus
and sarcophagi in general), but the lid. Even if the Bassus sarcophagus were not
placed on a base of some sort (and we have no idea how it was displayed or even
if it was visible at all), it can be contemplated by a spectator primarily from the
front, like a painting or relief panel. The two caskets, sitting on a table, say, or in
the hands of a viewer, are most naturally observed primarily from above.
The cover of the Brescia Lipsanotheca consists of a flat oblong ivory lid, which
would be seen from above, supported on a narrow vertical band on all four sides.
The flat top of the cover (Fig. 4), beneath a narrow strip with birds, perhaps doves,
has two registers of Christological imagery showing a historically ordered narrative
of the events leading up to the Passion, from Christ in the garden of Gethsemane,
29.
This either
represents
Christ resurrected
between the
still-living apostles,
or it shows all three in
their collective
heavenly glory, triumphant
after death.
30.
See above for the dimensions.
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32 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
via his arrest and the denial of Peter (in the top tier), to his appearances before
Caiaphas and Pilate (in the lower register).3' The vertical sides of the lid are deco
rated with medallion portraits (some now lost); there are four on each side, but
five on the front, with Jesus in the centre between Peter and Paul (e.g., Fig.
5)
.32
No one has made any sense of the number of portraits (seventeen in all, largely
unidentifiable in the absence of inscriptions), but they presumably represent either
early Christian saints (perhaps mostly apostles), or a mix of saints and Old Testa
ment prophets. If the former, then the lid offers a historical descent from the salvific
living presence of Christ, as embodied in his Passion, to the Church, as embodied
in his disciples and successors. If the latter, then the lid mixes OldTestament fore
runners of Christ who prophesied his coming with later witnesses. Both interpret
ations are perhaps possible at the same time.
The four sides of the base are subject to complex framing (Fig.
5,
for a view
of the front). At the top of each face is the band of medallion portraits that forms
part of the lid. To the right and left, occupying the surface space of the uprights
that serve as the casket's four legs, are narrow panels with images. These may have
only decorative significance (e.g., the tree on the left edge of the right side), but
appear sometimes to have symbolic resonances (for example, the fish on the left
of the front, or the cross and the lampstand on the left side) and occasionally to
venture into the substance of the casket's larger iconographic argument by referring
to a specific moment in scripture or Christian tradition, most notably in the case
of the hanging Judas to the right of the back, and the cock on a column at the right
of the front, apparently signifying Peter's denial and hence repeating the same motif
as the lid.33Within this overall frame are three registers of images, the central regis
ter being significantly larger than the others and being uniformly concerned with
New Testament scenes, most of them representing Christ from the Gospels, but
including the story of Peter, Sapphira and Ananias from Acts
5.
i-i i
on the back.34
The narrow bands above and below this largely Christological register sandwich
the casket's insistent Christianity within a frame of Old Testament typologies.35
The Brescia Lipsanotheca effectively employs an extremely complex version
of the framing strategy we have encountered in the Bassus sarcophagus, but this
time with no hint of a traditional polytheistic cultural context, no genuflection as
it were to Hellenism. Instead, the larger registers-both on the sides and on the
lid-as well as the roundels with portraits emphasise the Christian dispensation,
while Jewish imagery is chosen for the smaller bands both to prefigure the Christian
message typologically and to be surpassed by it in both size and visual emphasis.
Speaking to an ecclesiastical audience in as liturgically charged a context as a
31.
Tkacz
(as
in n.
3), pp. 28-30
and
196-200,
also
pp. 63-107
for a detailed
argument
about the
typo
logical
relations of the Old Testament scenes on the
sides to the lid.
32.
Tkacz
(as
in n.
3), pp. 46-47
and
233-36
with
full
bibliography.
33.
On the
uprights,
see Tkacz
(as
in n.
3), pp. 239
43
34-
SeeTkacz
(as
in n.
3), pp. 30-46, 203-05, 213
14, 221-23
and
23?
f?r
identifications,
discussion and
bibliography.
35.
Tkacz
(as
in n.
3), pp. 201-02, 206-12, 225-29
and
231
with detailed
discussion,
identifications and
bibliography.
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JAS ELSNER 33
reliquary or pyxis, and within an exclusively Christian regime of representation,
the Lipsanotheca constructs a world where the traditional Roman culture that the
Bassus sarcophagus affirms as ancestral not only does not exist, but has never
existed, save as that which Christ's Incarnation negated (in the form of Pilate, for
instance). It posits an exclusively Jewish (rather than pagan Roman) past, from
which emerge, via typological selection, the Christian dispensation of miracle and
Passion, as well as the specifically Roman (and hence Italian) succession of Christ's
mission in the imagery of Peter the Roman apostle, from his denial on the lid via
his medallion portrait and the image of the crowing cock on the front, to his appear
ance as judge after Jesus's death in the narrative of Sapphira and Ananias. Again,
framing is essential as a formal means of conveying an ideological position. By
contrast with the plea made via the juxtaposition of different worlds by the Bassus
sarcophagus (true to its specific sphere of traditional aristocratic patronage in
Rome in the 350s), the Brescia Lipsanotheca insists on Christian exclusivity in ways
that may reflect the cultural realities of the last decades of the fourth century, when
the banning of pagan practices was becoming widespread. Just as we cannot be
wholly certain of the Lipsanotheca's precise function, so its imagery is relatively less
self-reflexive than that of the Bassus sarcophagus or Projecta Casket.What matters
here is less the advertisement of function (which one might take to be rendered
wholly obvious by ritual handling during the liturgy or other activities related to
veneration) than the insistence on Christian readings in an item of ecclesiastical
usage.
The Projecta Casket is a much more complex shape than the other two boxes:
two truncated rectangular pyramids joined together at their wider faces so that one
forms the lid and the other the base (Figs 6-8). This gives a total often flat surfaces,
of which only the bottom one is not decorated, leaving five faces on the lid and
four on the base. While the material, structure, and iconographic argument of the
Bassus sarcophagus and the Brescia Lipsanotheca make the hierarchy of their
images relatively straightforward, culminating respectively in the Christian front
of Bassus's coffin and the Passion themes of the Brescia Lipsanotheca's lid, the
complexity of the Projecta Casket's form allows a greater complexity of emphasis.
There is clearly a front (Figs 6-7)-the side opposite to where the hinges are placed
(Fig. 8)-on whose iconography the two shorter sides of the lid are designed to
converge (Fig. 7). The back (Fig. 8) is marked not only by the orientation of its
images-backwards vis-'a-vis those on the horizontal flat panel of the lid and the
lid's prime frontal face with its famous toilet of Venus-but also by the fact that
the two back faces, of the lid and base, are the only faces where gilding was not
applied.36 But which of the three faces that constitute the front is the prime one is
more difficult to tell. The top panel, showing the married couple in their finery in
a wreath between cupids (Fig. 7), is especially significant in the marital context to
which the casket is usually attributed and to which its
inscription
draws attention.
36.
Shelton
(as
in n.
5), p. 74
-
also
arguing
that
gilding
is more
prominent
on the casket than other
decorative
treatments,
such as
stippling
and
groov
ing.
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34 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
But the epiphany of nude Venus in a cockle-shell between centaurotritons on the
lid's front (Fig. 7), and the regal image on the front of the base of a splendidly
adorned lady of the house (Projecta?) at her toilet (Fig. 6), in imitation or emulation
of the toilet of Venus above her, both have claims to a certain priority. While the
iconography of Venus and 'Projecta' are clearly designed to reflect each other, the
circular wreath of the married couple on top frames them in a medallion shape
echoing or echoed by the circular cockle-shell in which Venus sits.37
Each of the five panels on the lid is framed with a garland motif, which is also
used to create the wreath, held by the two naked cupids, in which the couple
(Secundus and Projecta?) appear on the top. As if to emphasise its iconic signifi
cance, this top panel has a second frame, which has been described as a 'stylized
floral motif'.38 The wreath-pattern effectively implies a parallelism or inter-linkage
of all the scenes on the lid in relation to the couple. Each of the decorated panels
of the base is also framed, this time with a frieze of vines and clusters of grapes, for
which it would be hard to argue a Christian significance. The base (Fig. 6) is further
constructed as a colonnade of spirally fluted columns with alternating round arches
and pointed gables (a round arch always being in the centre of any one side), just
like the lower register of the Bassus sarcophagus. Except for the lady of the house
seated in the centre of the front, there are three figures on each side, one in each
intercolumniation, all of them servants standing between drawn-back curtains and
carrying accoutrements of the toilet. The servants may constitute a procession,39
or simply exemplify the lady's range and variety of attendants.4? All the other spaces
generated by this framing (for instance the spandrels of the arches and the spaces
to the left and right of the outer columns on the two longer sides) are filled with
a variety of items: peacocks, birds, bowls of fruit.
In the case of the Projecta Casket, this framing allows creative and amusing
play through the repetition of different motifs in different, discretely framed-off
sections of the casket's surface. The cupid riding a centaurotriton to the right of
Venus on the front of the lid offers her a bowl of fruit like those in the spandrels
of the base. Behind the scene on the back of the lid showing a procession to the
baths is an arcade of rounded and pointed arches on spirally fluted columns that
evokes the framing of the base. On the right side of the lid, the bird to the left of
the nereid riding a hippocampus appears to reflect the birds in the spandrels of the
arches on the base.4' Most striking, in what the casket has already set up as a super
self-reflexive dynamic of imagery, is the representation of items of the toilet, like
the Projecta Casket itself. Venus looks into a mirror held out by the centaurotriton
to her right (Fig. 6), just as 'Projecta' is offered a mirror by the maid to her right
(Fig. 6), while the attendant to the right at the back of the base also appears to be
bearing a mirror. The maid to the left of 'Projecta' on the base brings her a casket,
while the cupid on Venus's left holds out a box (Fig. 6), and on the back of the lid
37-
See
especially
L.
Schneider,
Die Dom?ne als
Weltbild.
Wirkungsstrukturen
der
sp?tantiken
Bilder
spache,
Wiesbaden
1983, pp. 27-33
on these formal
parallels.
38.
Shelton
(as
in n.
5), p. 72.
39. Following
Shelton
(as
in n.
5), p. 32.
40. Following
Eisner
(as
in n.
5), p.
28.
41.
Shelton
(as
in n.
5, p. 73)
calls the bird a duck.
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JAS ELSNER 35
two attendants carry caskets (as does each maid in the centre of the two shorter
sides of the base), all of them boxes, perhaps 'like' the Projecta casket itself (Fig.
8). Other figures carry other items such as a circular casket hanging from chains
or lamps that resemble other objects which appear to have been part of the larger
collection of silverware within which the Projecta Casket was found.42
This interweaving of iconographic motifs between discrete elements of the
casket is clearly designed to emphasise the parallelisms of the divine-mythological
sphere of the toilet of Venus with accompanying nereids, on the front and two side
panels of the lid, with the rest of the iconography, which is domestic and secular.
The recapitulation of the base's arcade in the scene on the back of the lid links it
firmly by means of framing devices with the domestic sphere of the base. Mytho
logical imagery is here fully framed by the domestic: the three marine Venus panels
sit on the base with a scene of domestic bathing (a procession to the baths) on the
back of the lid (intruding as it were into the casket's divine register); all this is
capped with the medallion portrait of the couple at the top. The human imagery
refers to acculturated water: that used for domestic bathing and adornment; the
divine imagery is of nature's water: the sea and its gods. The upper panel unites
the two themes of this visual fugue with the couple (including 'Projecta', now fully
adorned after all the work shown on the base) between cupids, borrowed as it were
from the divine register of the epiphany of Venus. Is the appearance of Venus the
blessing for the marital life of Secundus and Projecta, or is their life as depicted
on the casket a celebration ofVenus? Does Venus's nudity figure the sexuality that
Projecta as aristocratic wife (and Christian matron) must disguise in public?43 And
how can this rich visual argument for a traditional late antique Hellenism in the
private sphere be made to work alongside the exhortation, inscribed on the rim of
the lid immediately below the image of Venus, for Secundus and Projecta to live
in Christ?
Let us stand back briefly from our close examination of these boxes. I have
been careful not to ask too explicit a question of them so far, although choosing
to put them together (the first time this has been done in a close comparative
argument, so far as I know) is already to argue a kind of ideological programme,
inasmuch as it frames our boxes together by reference to each other. Had I agendas
that specifically concerned, for instance, objects in marble, or ivory, or silver, then
I should not have made the choice of framing these three specific items in the
space of one discussion. This reflection raises a homology between what our boxes
do in constructing various kinds of frames for the iconography that decorates them
and what I am doing-what the scholarly enterprise itself does-in asking academic
questions of particular classes or selections of material.We are constantly conduct
ing a framing exercise, side by side with an exercise in researching and presenting
primary evidence (whether material, cultural, historical, literary, and so forth).
42.
The Muse Casket is round and
hangs
from
chains;
see Buschhausen
(as
in n.
7), pp. 214-17,
and
Shelton
(as
in n.
5), pp. 75-77.
The elaborate silver
candelabrum has been
lost;
see Shelton
(as
in n.
5),
P-94
43. Following
Eisner
(as
in n.
5), pp. 30-32.
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36 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
One might say that getting the balance right is the essence of the enterprise: the
price of excessive empiricism would be a neglect of the ideological or argumentative
frame, and the price of an excessive form of theory, or methodological self-reflec
tion, would be a neglect of what lies inside the frame.
So, what conclusion and hypotheses can be drawn from a comparison of our
three boxes? I hope we can agree that all three exhibit substantive interest in their
frames. All three conduct their framing on three levels. As boxes, they are containers
for material constituted of something different from themselves.44 As complex
decorative objects, their surfaces show a formal interest in dividing up and contain
ing their iconographic subject matter in different forms of framing (for instance
arches and spandrels) and banding or tiering. Within this strategy of multiple regis
ters, each box also uses the substantive meanings of one iconography to sandwich,
or frame, or contain, the substantive meanings of a second iconography that is
(within the visual rhetoric of that box) potentially more important. So in the Bassus
sarcophagus, the Christian front is framed by the traditional secularism of the lid
and sides. In the Brescia Lipsanotheca, the Christologies of the sides and lid are
framed by two bands of Jewish imagery around the top and bottom of the base.
In the Projecta Casket, not only are three faces of mythical-divine imagery on the
lid framed by the domestic-secular imagery of the base and back, but the double
portrait in a medallion wreath on the lid combines elements of both these spheres
and may be said to be framed by both (although the language of interweaving
strands of imagery might be more appropriate in discussion of a garland motif and
a wreath).
Taken together, what kind of story do our boxes tell? That is, what is the
appropriate frame for them, or into what box should we put them? These are more
serious questions than may at first appear; they firmly emphasise the ideological
or instrumental purposes with which I started (perhaps unconsciously) in this
inquiry. If I were to play the cultural historian, I might want to say that all three
boxes together give a penetrating insight into the complexities and multiplicity of
positions, even identities, around the interface of Christianity and paganism in the
second half of the fourth century. Or I might say that we witness a chronological
movement from the acceptability of traditional Hellenism in the Bassus sarco
phagus in 359 to its draining away by the later fourth century (say the 380s) in the
Brescia Lipsanotheca. Here the Projecta Casket (if early, say 330-60) supports
the case for traditional Hellenism openly juxtaposed with or against Christianity,
or (if late, say 370-80) suggests that the ecclesiastical and domestic spheres offer
deeply different patterns of development as regards Christianisation in this period.
Or I might say that the three objects-respectively funerary, liturgical and domestic
-show different patterns and etiquettes of Christianisation across different social
spheres in broadly the same culture. If I were to play the art historian, I might
44-
If however the
Lipsanotheca
contained bones
as
relics,
then its
ivory might
be construed as a kind of
bone.
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JAS ELSNER 37
want to say that these three boxes demonstrate a particular and unusual interest
in complex decorative detail, both on the level of transmitting meanings and on the
level of elaborate formal framing, that is typical of the arts of a particular moment
in late antiquity, the moment defined by the exquisite sculpted miniature at the
expense of large-scale statuary.45 Or I might wish to say that what these boxes
showed was typical less of a specific time than of the patronage of a particular culti
vated group of aristocrats based in the uniquely charged location of Rome, at a
point when the imperial capital had already been moved elsewhere. Yet such big
historical claims-claims in the larger history of art-might be reformulated as an
observation about the trans-historical (or strictly formal) nature of boxes. Being
relatively small objects, designed for handling and close attention by their users,
boxes might be said to attract greater interest in intricate and small-scale decoration
than larger works, especially in the case of examples executed in expensive materials
for wealthy patrons and connoisseurs. In particular, the three-dimensional framing
function of a lavishly decorated box as a container turns out, interestingly, to influ
ence the two-dimensional framing strategies of these boxes' decoration, both in the
sandwiching of one class of iconography with another and in the choice of a variety
of specific ornamental devices for formal framing, from intercolumniations to
wreath-patterns, medallions, panelling and banding. Making an argument of this
kind would be to stake a claim about a class of material culture rather than a period
of art history.46 If I were to play the religious historian of Christian origins, I might
want to note the different genealogies of Christianity emphasised by the different
choices made in framing Christian subjects. The Bassus sarcophagus places a
fundamentally Romanocentric Christian iconography in the midst of a traditional
series of references to the cultural norms of Roman paganism (at least among
the aristocracy), a culture built on and surpassed by the new faith. The Brescia
Lipsanotheca chooses instead to frame its narrative of Christian triumph in a Jewish
genealogy: a wholly different set of origins, and a scriptural rather than cultural
lineage well suited to a liturgical as opposed to an elite funerary context. Largely
eschewing religion, the Projecta Casket frames domesticity and marriage in a non
Christian world of mythical allusion. Here the choices of frame become a figure
for the differing options available for tracing genealogy in the cultural firmament
of fourth-century Italy, both the actual origins of the Christianity practised by late
antique Romans and the profound projections of desired and preferred models of
paternity hardly unsusceptible to psychoanalytic turns of interpretative invest
ment.
Given what might be called the tongue-in-cheek formalism of my discussion
(which has reduced-or is it elevated?-even subject matter and
iconography
to
forms of 'framing'), I have no wish to offer preferences about which of these
45- J- Eisner,
'Late
Antique
Art: the Problem of the
Concept
and the Cumulative
Aesthetic',
in
Approach
ing
Late
Antiquity.
The
Transformation from Early
to Late
Empire,
ed. S. Swain and M.
Edwards,
Oxford
2004,
pp. 271-309 (293-304).
46.
For
instance,
the box as a
specific
kind of
miniature,
like the doll's house. On
this,
see S.
Stewart,
On
Longing.
Narratives
of
the
Miniature,
the
Gigantic,
the
Souvenir,
the
Collection,
Durham NC
I9933 PP- 61-65.
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38 BOXES FROM LATE ROMAN ITALY
positions one might prefer. Indeed, all are more or less plausible, given different
interests and starting points, and I have myself entertained most of them at some
time or other. The more interesting issue is how apparently formal choices about
what materials to discuss, coupled with particular selectivities about what aspects
of them to emphasise, generate conclusions that can appear substantive either as
historical or art historical generalisations.
No less than the problem of what significance to give to the framing strategies
in any or all of our boxes is the problem of how we frame their discussion (the
discussion in fact of any empirical material, be it art or literature or any other sort
of documentary evidence or material culture), and to what extent our conclusions
are guided (consciously or not) by the acts of framing. Formalism, so long derided
as an inappropriately reductive tool of literary or artistic analysis, may turn out to
be a deeper discursive structure governing rhetorical and methodological strategies
of argument, which purport to be very far from formalist. Just as the substantive
iconographic content of our boxes within their panels and frames turns out to
be a form of framing in its own right, so arguments that deliver historical or art
historical conclusions worryingly may be no more than the results of our own
frames. That, in conclusion, is the anxiety about framing that I have found opening
up before me as I attempted to unwrap the formal packaging of these caskets from
long ago.47
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
47-
It is a
special
honour to contribute a
paper
to the celebration of the Courtauld Institute's
75th
birthday:
I
spent eight happy years
there as a member
of the
teaching staff,
as well as one as a Master's
Student.
My
thanks are due to Paul
Crossley
and
John
Lowden for the
invitation,
as well as to
Verity
Platt and
Michael
Squire
for
providing
the forum where this
piece
was
originally
delivered and for their comments.
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