The volume under review is the accompanying catalogue for a special exhibition held at the Gardner Museum in 2018 and comprises six extended and lavishly illustrated essays. This is a thorough examination of a single monument from multiple points of view by a group of scholars of differing expertise – an unusual and, at times, highly rewarding exercise of scholarly collaboration.
Nielsen sets the Farnese sarcophagus in the context of the museum's history and its founder's attitude towards her collection as well as towards her own family history – in a clever and informative essay that views the museum itself as a commemorative monument. As Nielsen explains, Gardner's body was displayed there before her funeral and burial in July 1924, and the museum took on the character of a family tomb (although the Farnese sarcophagus itself can hardly be conceived as ‘a memorial marker to Isabella as it was to its original inhabitant’, p. 28).
P. Crowley studies the sarcophagus as an ancient work of art and cogently rehearses the current hallmarks in the study of the genre: sexuality and gender, mythological themes, the relationship to the literary endeavours of the ‘Second Sophistic’, and the place of such decorated marble caskets in Roman funerary ritual. Yet little attention is paid to matters of style; formal features are treated essentially as the vehicles of iconography; and most strikingly, there is no mention of, or argument for, the work's date.
C. Pidatella traces the history of the sarcophagus via the documentary record, from its discovery in Tivoli to its arrival in Boston, in a rich discussion that gathers together the extensive documentation and publishes new materials. The amount that is known of this monument's history is staggering, rivalled by very few other sarcophagi.
A. Varick Lauder surveys the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drawings of the sarcophagus, and sets them in their antiquarian context, a discussion that complements that of Pidatella.
J. Chloros, J. Podany and H. Salmon offer a thorough technical examination – and this constitutes the volume's greatest contribution. This is a detailed assessment of marble carving techniques; a discussion of the sarcophagus’ re-cutting at various stages in its long life and a careful review of the history of its restorations; an analysis of its original painted elaboration and gilding; and scrutiny of the deterioration of its surface, both natural and from post-antique interventions (both chemical and manual).
Lastly, P. Kaiser, an artist, offers a completely baffling and impressionistic response to the sarcophagus, made all the more impenetrable on account of the failure to explain the relationship between his published text and the installation by the artistic collective, OpenEndedGroup (of which Kaiser is a member) that had constituted an aspect of the exhibition.
