Detail of a Marble Pediment of a Funerary Altar in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2007

Marble pediment of a funerary altar
Roman, Hadrianic period, ca. 120-130 AD

Accession # 14.130.8

This fragment of an altar is from a commemorative monument in which identifying inscriptions would have appeared on the shaft below the three portrait busts. Since that part of the altar is now missing, the relationship between the figures is not known. The woman at the center, whose hairstyle suggests a date in the early second century AD, is the main focus of attention and so is thought to be the mother of the two men, who look respectfully toward her. It may be that they died first, and their grieving mother, who is presented in a more lifelike pose, was left to set up this monument.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.