Funerary Imagery and Iconography

Abstract

This chapter looks at Roman funerary imagery across a range of visual materials, including sarcophagi, ash chests, frescoes, mosaic, and stucco relief, with an emphasis on the expression of the existential value of a human life. It considers the diverse range of iconography that speaks to the emotions and perceptions around death as they relate to the ideas of loss, separation, and transformation. The representations cannot be interpreted in light of a single phenomenological, associative, or interpretive reception, but collectively they explore themes of mourning, pain of separation, and hoped-for reunion. Areas of consideration include commemorative portraits, the exploration of permeability and the limen between the worlds of the living and the dead, divine guides, travel through the Underworld, and the potential for images of suffering to comfort through viewer empathy or heal, in the Aristotelian sense, by means of a cathartic purge.