Location: Vatican Museums

This cloth—first woven by a wise spider—sends social messages through a system of specific patterns.

Kente cloth

Even in death, great Roman families were concerned with reinforcing and projecting their status.

Tomb of the Scipios and the sarcophagus ...

Apoxyomenos, Lysippos — Ancient Greek athletes cleaned themselves with oil. This sculpture shows one athlete’s bathing ritual.

Lysippos, Apoxyomenos (Scraper)

Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes, Laocoön and his Sons, early first century C.E., marble, 7'10 1/2" high (Vatican Museums) — The writhing agony of the Trojan Laocoon made this Hellenistic masterpiece famous throughout history.

Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes, Laocoön ...

Veristic male portrait (similar to Head of a Roman Patrician), early 1st Century B.C.E., marble, life size (Vatican Museums, Rome) — With age comes experience, and sculptors in the Roman Republic highlighted seniority—warts and all.

Veristic male portrait

Exekias, Attic black figure amphora with Ajax and Achilles playing a game, c. 540-530 B.C.E., archaic period, 61.1 cm high, found in Vulci (Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Vatican) — Achilles and Ajax, heroes of the Trojan War, break from battle to play a friendly game that hints at a tragic future.

Exekias, Attic black figure amphora with Ajax ...

Augustus of Prima Porta, 1st c. AD, Vatican Museums — Nothing was more important to a Roman emperor than his image.

Augustus of Primaporta

Ulpiae Epigone, late 1st or early 2nd century C.E., sepulchral relief, Tomb of the Volusii, Via Appia near Rome, marble, 92 cm high (Vatican Museums) — Death, memory, and funerary rituals—monumental tombs lined the streets leading into ancient Roman cities.

Roman funeral rituals and social status: The ...

Mars of Todi, late 5th or early 4th century B.C.E., hollow-cast bronze, 141 cm high (Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Vatican Museums) — Lighting struck this statue dedicated to the Etruscan god of war, marking it as a particularly sacred object.

Mars of Todi

Caravaggio, Deposition from the cross, detail — Spotlight on Christ! Watching this dramatic scene unfold, we become a part of it, as if already inside the tomb.

Caravaggio, Deposition (or Entombment)