Anthony Majanlahti

The C6 #mosaics of S. Vitale in #Ravenna are often read as a transition from classical to #Christian visual language, but they are also highly polemical. The lunette’s Old Testament scenes operate as assertions of theological orthodoxy for #MosaicMonday. #AncientBluesky 🏺🧵

Above the arch, two winged angels hoist a #clipeus containing a jewelled #cross. This hijacks a standard motif from #Roman #sarcophagi, where erotes held a portrait of the deceased. By substituting the cross, the #mosaic transforms personal apotheosis into cosmic salvation.

The C6 #mosaics of S. Vitale in #Ravenna are often read as a transition from classical to #Christian visual language, but they are also highly polemical. The lunette’s Old Testament scenes operate as assertions of theological orthodoxy for #MosaicMonday. #AncientBluesky 🏺🧵

#SarcophagusSaturday and #SpoliaSunday unite on the garden façade of the Villa Medici. This C3 CE #Roman #sarcophagus front depicts the Judgement of #Paris. It looks like a continuous narrative frieze, but Renaissance restorers heavily altered it before installation. 🧵 #AncientBluesky 🏺

Centuries later, Édouard #Manet lifted Raimondi's altered grouping to scandalise the #Parisian art world with his 1863 painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, translating ancient water deities into modern picnickers. A full-barrelled frontal attack on the rigid formalism of the Academy.

#SarcophagusSaturday and #SpoliaSunday unite on the garden façade of the Villa Medici. This C3 CE #Roman #sarcophagus front depicts the Judgement of #Paris. It looks like a continuous narrative frieze, but Renaissance restorers heavily altered it before installation. 🧵 #AncientBluesky 🏺

The unbearable lightness of being #Nero. For a belated #FrescoFriday, this delicate #fresco survives from his #DomusTransitoria. Surviving examples beneath the Cœnatio Jovis confirm the missing parts held blue glass hemispheres to reflect the adjacent nymphaeum. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday, this C4 BCE #Greek #relief in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is dedicated to #Apollo Patroos. Civic brotherhoods commissioned these as youths entered the citizen body. The painted pinax on the wall is a brilliant meta-reference to the dedication itself. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #MosaicMonday, this framed Nilotic scene is actually a surviving fragment of the famous Asàrotos òikos (Unswept Floor) from the Aventine. It formed the high-art centrepiece of the dining room, admired by guests looking past the trompe-l'œil food debris at their feet. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SpoliaSunday, these fluted C15 #spolia #columns in a courtyard of the S. Spirito hospital survive from the ancient Horti Agrippinae below. In their presence, perhaps, the cruel emperor #Caligula would have unfortunates suffer arbitrary and violent fates. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SarcophagusSaturday, this c. 160 CE Antonine sarcophagus from the Vigna Moroni shows Erotes carrying the newly forged Arms of Achilles to elevate the deceased to heroic status. Beneath the shield, an Eros wrestles a satyr, proving Love conquers all. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #FrescoFriday, this wall of #fresco in the #HouseoftheVettii in #Pompeii shows the phantasmagorical #architecture of the late Fourth Style. Though relatively small, this ala or wing off the peristyle was cleverly enlarged by different planes of painted illusion. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday, we examine this C2 CE #Roman copy of a C5 BCE #Greek #relief of #Medea and the Peliades. Discovered in 1814 at palazzo De Carolis on via del Corso, its wear pattern suggests it was used upside down as a paver. Now in the #VaticanMuseums. #AncientBluesky 🏺

The #Simonetti marble corrected centuries of misunderstanding caused by this recarved #Berlin version. Beyond changing a bloody dagger into a branch, an unknown C16 restorer deepened the drapery folds. What the Berlin relief monumentalises, the Simonetti relief humanises.

For #ReliefWednesday, we examine this C2 CE #Roman copy of a C5 BCE #Greek #relief of #Medea and the Peliades. Discovered in 1814 at palazzo De Carolis on via del Corso, its wear pattern suggests it was used upside down as a paver. Now in the #VaticanMuseums. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Before 1777, Falerio Picenus was a nearly perfectly-preserved #Roman town. Then Pius VI’s diggers arrived. For #MosaicMonday, we examine this Antonine-era leopard #emblema, stripped from a private #domus and treated as #spolia in the Vatican's Scala Simonetti. #AncientBluesky 🏺

"In the stillness of remembering / What you had and what you lost." The courtyard of Carlo #Maderno's 1616-1618 palazzo #Varese looks convincingly #Baroque and full of #spolia. This #SpoliaSunday we're looking for the lost Varese collection. #AncientBluesky 🏺🧵

The C2 CE Varese #Athena, now in palazzo #Torlonia on via della Conciliazione. Sold in 1876 by then-owners of palazzo #Varese, it represents the only traceable piece from the original collection.

"In the stillness of remembering / What you had and what you lost." The courtyard of Carlo #Maderno's 1616-1618 palazzo #Varese looks convincingly #Baroque and full of #spolia. This #SpoliaSunday we're looking for the lost Varese collection. #AncientBluesky 🏺🧵

A #watercolour sketch from 1821 by the visiting #French artist Augustin-Théophile Quantinet shows us what the courtyard of palazzo #Varese looked like before. The #fountain in the #garden looks delightful, and two ancient statues in niches flanked the portal leading to it.

"In the stillness of remembering / What you had and what you lost." The courtyard of Carlo #Maderno's 1616-1618 palazzo #Varese looks convincingly #Baroque and full of #spolia. This #SpoliaSunday we're looking for the lost Varese collection. #AncientBluesky 🏺🧵

The *other* holy trinity is our focus for today's #SarcophagusSaturday. This late C2 CE #sarcophagus in the #VaticanMuseums shows three distinct Dionysi in one relief: the mythological lover, the ecstatic sponsor of #theatre, and the solemn object of worship. #AncientBluesky 🏺

"You can tell the sun in his jealous sky / When we walked in fields of gold." For #FrescoFriday, the House of #Livia on the #Palatine. Painted c. 30 BCE during the ascendancy of #Augustus, this Second Style wall depicts his Golden Age of perpetual abundance. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday, this C5 BCE Athenian stele is a physical fragment of Phidian brilliance and a historical fragment of the dispersed Giustiniani collection. Breakage stimulates the imagination. As Sondheim wrote: "Nothing's changed / Only maybe slightly rearranged." #AncientBluesky 🏺

Special K. For #EpigraphyTuesday, we look at two instances of the archaic K in the word EVOKATVS, normally EVOCATVS, recalled veterans who were "called out" of retirement to re-enlist, with many privileges for doing so. This one, Ingenuus, was a career soldier. #AncientBluesky 🏺

But even a paterfamilias like M. Aurelius Sabinus, whose inscription is walled into a hotel bar on via Giulia, could be tempted back into service as an "EVOK" (NB not an Ewok) by the double pay and comfortable emoluments. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Special K. For #EpigraphyTuesday, we look at two instances of the archaic K in the word EVOKATVS, normally EVOCATVS, recalled veterans who were "called out" of retirement to re-enlist, with many privileges for doing so. This one, Ingenuus, was a career soldier. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #MosaicMonday, a c. 60-50 BCE #mosaic floor from the basis villæ, the Late Republican core of Hadrian's Villa. If his wife Vibia #Sabina inherited this estate, her Antonine relatives held a 200-year connection to these local stones, unified by descent rather than adoption. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Necessity is spolia's iron law. For #SpoliaSunday we examine a C4-C2 BCE Etruscan nenfro sarcophagus in Viterbo. Likely unearthed during C13 works, it was reused for a papal potentate, much like Pope Alexander IV, then ruthlessly reused again until its identity was lost. #AncientBluesky 🏺

The law of the jungle. For #SarcophagusSaturday, a C3 #sarcophagus a lenòs at #palazzoVenezia. Unlike variants where a trainer restrains the beast to show #virtus, this #lion devours its prey. It reflects the cruelty of nature, matching the anxieties of a fractured Roman empire. #AncientBluesky 🏺