Late Antique sculptures

Bizonal capital, Constantinople area, National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari. Photo by Nicola Monari, from Catalogo BBCC RAS

As with the history of architecture, even for early medieval sculpture in Sardinia, a periodization can be proposed that proceeds parallel to the dates and events of historical demarcation, from the early introduction of Christianity to the island at the end of the Vandal era (534 AD) for the late antique documentation, from the middle of the 6th to the 7th century for the Paleobizantine one, from the middle of the tenth to the first decades of the eleventh century for the Byzantine period, with sporadic sculptural documents that are inserted to fill the gap of the VIII-IX century.
The sarcophagus derives from the cemetery context of Sant'Antioco, from which a marble fragment with strigilations derives, preserved in the local Biggio collection, whose central panel shows the figure of Lyrical Orpheus. Neither the precise findings with sarcophagi from the 3rd-4th century, such as the one preserved in the crypt of the Basilica of San Gavino in Porto Torres, or similar late antique examples by Officina Ostiense, nor the iconological reading that identifies Orpheus as a figure of Christ, are sufficient, however, to demonstrate the Christian faith of the buried, which cannot be ascertained on the simple basis of the iconographic subject, common to the production intended for non-Christians.
The oldest sculptural document of certain Christian iconography is the fragment of a double-register sarcophagus, coming from Olbia and also in the Cagliari museum collection. The upper register depicts “Sacrifice of Isaac, Healing of the paralytic, Daniel in the lion's den”; in the lower register, the heads of four male characters remain. The proposed date for its production is at the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century, in a workshop probably in Ostia.
Other sculptural fragments, also now in the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari, cover the chronological period from the middle of the 4th to the 7th century, indicating the continuity of marble imports from the Italian continent. Numerous capitals on the island, especially those with smooth leaves, may have been worked in Roman workshops between the 4th and 5th centuries, although the continuity of production in the following centuries makes it difficult to place them precisely chronologically.
A beautiful capital of the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari (see photo at the beginning of the page), with two zones with wicker kalathos and doves at the corners of the abacus hosting graduate crosses, is instead attributable to the production of Constantinople workshops active in the first half of the 6th century.

Update

27/5/2026 - 16:35