3-095-578 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Cast of proper left side of grave altar of M. Antonius Alexander, late 18th or early 19th century. Plaster cast of a grave altar for a man, M. Antonius Alexander, who was the freedman of Antonia the Younger (36 BCE-37 AD/CE), a niece of Augustus, grandmother of Caligula, and mother of Claudius. The original object is in the Museo Chiaramonti of the Musei Vaticani (Vatican Museums) in Rome. The altar can be dated securely to the mid-or later second century because of the individuals mentioned. The panel shows birds drinking from a large krater or vase and a smaller pitcher stands nearby. It is an unusual depiction for such a monument; these monuments had a repetitive and set visual repertoire. The water vessels were used in religious ceremony and were probably intended to recall the funerary rites.