Stele with a Portrait of a Boy in the Yale University Art Gallery, October 2013

Stele with Portrait of a Boy

3rd century A.D.

Limestone

78.7 x 39.3 x 9.5 cm (31 x 15 1/2 x 3 3/4 in.)

Gift of Ambasador and Mrs. William L. Eagleton, Jr., B.A. 1948

1985.61.1

This fragmentary limestone stele from the Roman province of Africa (modern Tunisia) preserves most of two (probably of three) registers of relief carving. In the center of the narrow upper register, the seated female figure, exposing her breast to nurse a baby on her lap, is Caelestis, the Romanized version of the principal goddess of the region, here conflated with the fertility goddess Dea Nutrix. To her right, a clothed attendant stands supporting a basket on her head and a bucket in her right hand, while to her left a nude woman strikes a pose evocative of the goddess Venus. In the larger zone below, beneath a scalloped niche, the figure of a standing boy survives from the knees up. Facing forward, he wears the toga and bulla—customary attire for a Roman child. He holds a sacrificial bowl by his side in his left hand, while under his (missing) right hand a second bowl rests atop an altar. Since the boy is shown in the act of making sacrifice, this stele may have served as a votive monument, though a funerary function is also possible.

Culture: Roman, Tunisian

Period: Roman, 3rd century A.D.

Classification: Sculpture


Bibliography:

“Acquisitions 19851987,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin 40, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 60.

Eric R. Varner, “Two Portrait Stelae and the Romanization of North Africa,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (1990): 1019, fig. 2.

Handbook of the Collections, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), 267, ill.

Text from: artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/7220