Browse Items (972 total)

This ceiling mosaic in Mausoleum M, the Tomb of the Julii, in the Vatican Necropolis underneath St. Peter’s Basilica, has been interpreted as depicting Christ as Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun), the sun god of the later Roman Empire. Sol Invictus came…

Museum Description: “Tapestry woven roundel (orbiculus). The small medallion at its center contains a female figure, likely a beneficent personification, with a green nimbus against a bright red background. Her breasts are distinguished in yellow…

Museum Description: “Noteworthy for its imposing size, this lamp is also remarkable for its combination of pagan and Christian imagery. The handle is an elegantly articulated griffin’s head, which derives from pagan mythology, while the cross, symbol…

Museum Description: “The fragment (BZ.1940.60) showing Dionysus, nude except for a mantle, with legs crossed and his right arm placed over his head—now broken off—leaning on a spirally fluted pedestal, served as a keystone of an arch whose span would…

The Ambrosian Iliad, also called the Ilias Picta, is the oldest (and only ancient) surviving illustrated manuscript of Homer’s Iliad. Along with the Vatican Vergil (see Module 1) and the Vergilius Romanus, it is one of three extant examples of…