Detail of the Marble Sarcophagus with the Contest between the Muses and Sirens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2010

Title: Marble sarcophagus with the contest between the Muses and the Sirens

Period: Late Imperial, Gallienic

Date: 3rd quarter of 3rd century A.D.

Culture: Roman

Medium: Marble, Pentelic

The deities Athena, Zeus, and Hera, assembled at the far left, preside over a musical contest between the Muses and Sirens. The Muses, associated with the highest intellectual and artistic aspirations, are defeating the Sirens, creatures that are half woman and half bird who lured men to destruction with their song. A drawing of the sarcophagus was commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo, one of the most respected patrons of art and scholarship in Rome during the first half of the seventeenth century. It belonged at that time to the del Nero family, who apparently converted it into a chest with a keyhole cut into the upper center of the frontal panel and had their coat of arms, a rampant hound, carved on the short ends of the sarcophagus.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248205