Fragment of slab with cross inscribed in quadrilaterals

The marble slab fragment has a Greek cross pattée with webbed decoration and scroll terminations, inscribed within a geometric pattern likely consisting of two quadrilaterals of two-lined wicker ribbon motif intersecting to form an eight-pointed star, within a sawtooth frame touching on the tip of the lozenge. Although displaying the same ornamentation, the fragment does not appear to be consistent with the fragmentary pluteus (inv. 13601) held in the Palazzo Venezia Lapidarium and from the same liturgical fittings considering the different size of the two crosses.
The decorative motif of the eight-pointed star has early Christian origins, with examples that date back to the sixth-century marble slabs of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (Russo 1984; Barsanti, Guiglia Guidobaldi 1992) and are echoed in eighth-century Rome and, at the same time, in the slabs of the Gregorian presbyterial enclosure of Saint Peter’s in the Vatican (Guiglia Guidobaldi 2002; Ballardini 2008). It is with Leo III (795–816) that the star is spanned by a cross, configuring a new iconography that would become very popular in the first half of the ninth century, a period marked by programmatic early Christian revival.
The beveled wicker ribbon and sawtooth frame date the find to no earlier than the late eighth century (Kautzsch 1939; Pani Ermini 1974) and are characteristic of the production of the workshops of Paschal I (817–824) (Melucco Vaccaro 1999; Betti 2017). However, the scant decorations make it difficult to assume any more certain a date than the first half of the ninth century.
The lower half of the extant fragment suggests that it may have originally been intended as a presbyterial enclosure slab, characterized by a two-sided ornament with one of the two sides only partially whittled to allow for the inclusion, leaning against the enclosure, of movable benches to be used as kneelers, as in the hypothetical reconstruction of Santa Maria in Trastevere (Bull-Simonsen Einaudi 2001).

Valentina Brancone

Mediocre. Cropped, with chisel nicks.

1999 (cleaning).

Unknown. Found during excavations for the Palazzetto, as part of demolition carried out in the area for the relocation of the Palazzetto di Venezia (1910–1914).

Rome, Archivio del Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, Bollettario, tome IV (handwritten annotation by Federico Hermanin, June 30, 1921);
Rome, Archivio del Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, Elenco dei frammenti marmorei sparsi nel Palazzo di Venezia (manuscript inventory by Federico Hermanin, no year);
Rome, Archivio del Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, inventorying the sculptures of the lower and upper loggias (manuscript inventory edited by Maria Vittoria Brugnoli, 1973).
 

Kautzsch Rudolf, Die römische Schmuckkunst in Stein vom 6. bis zum 10 Jahrhundert, in «Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte», III, 1939, pp. 3-73;
Pani Ermini Letizia, La Diocesi di Roma, t. I, La IV regione ecclesiastica, Corpus della scultura altomedievale, VII, Spoleto 1974;
Russo Eugenio, Fasi e nodi della scultura a Roma nel VI e VII secolo, in «Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes», 96, 1984, pp. 7-48;
Barsanti Claudia, Guiglia Guidobaldi Alessandra, Gli elementi della recinzione liturgica ed altri frammenti minori della produzione scultorea protobizantina, in Guidobaldi Federico, Barsanti Claudia, Guiglia Guidobaldi Alessandra (a cura di), San Clemente. La scultura del VI secolo, con un catalogo delle sculture altomedievali, Roma 1992, pp. 67-270;
Melucco Vaccaro Alessandra, Le officine marmorarie romane nei secoli VII-IX. Tradizione e apporti, in Cadei Antonio et al. (a cura di), Arte d’Occidente. Temi e metodi. Studi in onore di Angiola Maria Romanini, I, Roma 1999, pp. 299-308;
Bull-Simonsen Einaudi Karin, L’arredo liturgico medievale in Santa Maria in Trastevere, in de Blaauw Sible (a cura di), Arredi di culto e disposizioni liturgiche a Roma da Costantino a Sisto IV. Atti del Colloquio internazionale (Roma, 3-4 dicembre 1999), Roma 2001, pp. 81-99;
Guiglia Guidobaldi Alessandra, La scultura di arredo liturgico nelle chiese di Roma: il momento bizantino, in Guidobaldi Federico, Guiglia Guidobaldi Alessandra (a cura di), Ecclesiae urbis. Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi sulle chiese di Roma (IV-X secolo) (Roma, 4-10 settembre 2000), III, Città del Vaticano 2002, pp. 1479-1524;
Latini Massimo, Sculture altomedievali inedite del Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia in Roma, in «Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte», 57, 2003, pp. 113-152;
Latini Massimo, in Barberini Maria Giulia (a cura di), Tracce di pietra. La collezione dei marmi di Palazzo Venezia, Roma 2008, pp. 175-194, schede 1-29;
Ballardini Antonella, Scultura per l’arredo liturgico nella Roma di Pasquale I: tra modelli paleocristiani e Flechtwerk, in Quintavalle Arturo Carlo (a cura di), Medioevo: arte e storia, X Convegno internazionale di studi (Pavia, 18-22 settembre 2007), Milano-Parma 2008, pp. 225-246;
Betti Fabio, L’arredo liturgico della Basilica di Santa Sabina al tempo di papa Eugenio II: dalla scoperta ai restauri storici (1894, 1918, 1936), in «Arte medievale», 7, 2017, pp. 31-52.