Fragment of a lid of a Christian sarcophagus with an Epiphany Scene

myminifactory

The adoration of the Magi theme is extremely widespread in Christian sarcophagus lids, often paired with a pivotal episode from the Old Testament. In the fragment attributed to the Mattei collection, the child is depicted not as an infant fresh from birth but as a seated youngster on Mary's lap, an iconography clearly influenced by the apocryphal Gospels. The simplistic rendering of the scene and several distinctive features of its representation pinpoint the work to the initial half of the 4th century AD.