Currently not on view
Relief from a Christian sarcophagus: "The Good Shepherd",
ca. 300 A.D.
More Context
Handbook Entry
Within an architectural structure consisting of a pediment and spirally fluted columns, a young shepherd stands with a sheep slung over his shoulders. The boy is dressed in a belted, long-sleeved tunic, laced boots, and puttees for protection against thorny underbrush. Flanking him are two sheep and two trees, in one of which roosts a bird. The slab probably was cut from the center of a sarcophagus of the strigilated type, in which three reliefs are separated by zones of wavy, fluted ornament. The image of the faithful herder carrying a lost animal has roots in Archaic Greek art, but its widespread adoption in late antiquity as an image of Christ as the Good Shepherd was based on Hellenistic and Roman prototypes in the bucolic tradition.
Information
ca. 300 A.D.
Europe, Italy
Purchased by the Museum from Piero Tozzi, Rome, in 1952
Relief from a Sarcophagus with Christ as the Good Shepherd
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"Recent acquisitions," <em>Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University</em> 12, no. 1 (1953): p. 38-39., p. 38
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Frances Follin Jones, "The Princeton Art Museum: antiquities received in recent years", <em>Archaeology</em> 7, no. 4 (Dec., 1954): p. 237-243., p. 243
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C.C. Vermeule, "Roman sarcophagi in America: a short inventory", <em>Festschrift für Friedrich Matz</em> (Mainz: Zabern, 1962)., cat. no. 4; p. 105
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<p><em>Art of the Late Antique from American Collections: a loan exhibition of the Poses Institute of Fine Arts [held at] Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, December 18, 1968-February 16, 1969</em>, (Waltham, MA: Poses Institute of Fine Arts?, 1968).</p>, cat. no. 30; pl. XVII
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R. G. Calkins, <em>A medieval treasury: an exhibition of Medieval art from the third to the sixteenth century</em>, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1968)., p. 102 (illus.)
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Kurt Weitzmann, ed., <em>Age of spirituality: late antique and early Christian art, third to seventh: catalogue of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977, through February 12, 1978</em>, (New York : The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979)., cat. no. 463; p. 519 (illus.)
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John Olbrantz and Thomas Schlotterback, <em>Five thousand years of faces</em>, (Bellevue, WA: Bellevue Art Museum, 1983).
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J. Michael Padgett, ed., <em>Roman sculpture in The Art Museum, Princeton University, </em>(Princeton, NJ: Art Museum, Princeton University, 2001)., p. 2-5; cat. no. 1
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<p>Natalie B. Kampen, E. Marlow, and R.M. Molholt, <em>What is Man?: changing images of masculinity in Late Antique art</em>, (Portland, OR: Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, 2002).</p>, p. 56-58; pl. 29
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<em>Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection</em> (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 331 (illus.)
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A. Lazaridou, ed., <em>Transition to Christianity: art of late antiquity, 3rd-7th century AD</em>, (New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation; Athens: In collaboration with the Byzantine and Christian Museum, 2011)., p. 151-52; no. 119
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<em>Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections </em>(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 349
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