Una testimonianza di riuso dell’Antico: i quattro sarcofagi di Palazzo Madama

Abstract

This article presents the study of the four sarcophagi that decorate the cortile d’onore of Palazzo Madama, headquarters of the Senate
of the Italian Republic. They constitute an interesting testimony of the funerary production of the Roman age and testify to the revival
of the Ancient and the myth of Roman world in the Fascist era, when they were placed in the current position. For the reconstruction
of the complex events that involved the acquisition and arrangement of the four sarcophagi in the cortile d’onore, some unpublished
documents preserved in the Historical Archive of the Senate of the Republic and in the Capitoline Archives were useful to reveal, in
accordance with the autopsy, that each case is the result of the assembly of five slabs, some ancient, others modern, two reused. The
inscriptions are copies of ancient epigraphs found in the catacomb of san Panfilo. The ancient parts are pertinent to Roman sarcophagi,
whose structural and thematic characteristics belong to the most widespread classes in the urban production of sarcophagi: the strigilati
with erotes and imago clipeata and the sarcophagi with flying erotes supporting an epigraphic table.