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  • image M419

A Roman funerary urn (cinerarium) with separate lid, its name plate flanked by tripods.

Pentelic marble

Height: 40cm
Height (body): 24cm
Width (lid): 34cm
Length (lid): 26cm

Museum number: M419

Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 326help-vermeule-catalogue-number

On display: Catacombs
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house. For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit

Curatorial note

The name plate on this urn, framed with an egg and tongue moulding is set between broad fillets enriched with incised wave pattern flanked by tripods at the corners. Beneath the inscription two birds, facing outwards, turn back to peck at foliage in a vase between them. In the pediment of the lid are two dolphins. The lid has mask-antefixae on the corners.

Inscribed: D · M
M · CINCI
NICEPHORI

A member of the family of which the deceased was probably a libertus, Marcus Cincius Felix Iulianus, was Eques under Antoninus Pius1 and Duum Vir at Carthage.

W. Altmann, Dir römischen Grabaltäre der Kaiserzeit, Berlin, 1905, Chapter X, groups urns with the tripod motive after those enriched with torches at the front corners; compare p.120, fig. 97, no.122, in the Lateran Museum, for an arrangement similar to this example.

1 See C.I.L., VIII, no.27420

Provenance help-art-provenance

Rome: "Apud Aegidium Blasium quadratarium COL." (Pl. XIX of Piranesi, De Rom. Mag. Shows a small pilaster fragment as apud Blasium Lapicidam, so he must have been a connection of the former's circle. He is further located (Pl.XVII) as being near S.M. in Consolazione).

Literature

Description of Sir John Soane's Museum (guidebook), 1930, p.68, fig.37.
CIL, VI, ii, 14912. Colucci Picenum 11, 140, ex letteris abbatis Lancellotti.
F. Sinn, Römische. Marmorurnen, No. 157, p. 131., p 270.

Associated items

X95, found inside


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