3-095-510 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London; photographer: Paul Highnam"/Heritage Images

Cast of front panel of sarcophagus showing Artemis, Apollo, and Niobids. Cast of the front of the chest of a sarcophagus (now in the Galleria dei Candelabri, (Vatican Museums, Rome). The sarcophagus panel shows the story of Niobe who boasted that she was a greater mother than Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, because she had had nine children, not just two. Apollo and Artemis punished her by shooting her children. In the Roman period there was a famous, sculptural, over life-size group which showed Niobe, her children, their nurse, and a pedagogue. This served as a model both for statuary and scenes on sarcophagi. The story was popular on the sarcophagi of the second and third centuries AD/CE because it reminded viewers that tragic death occurred to all sorts of individuals and provided comparisons with which the survivors could empathize. This particular sarcophagus was found in 1776 on the via Appia outside of Rome; the streets leading away from the cities were the traditional places for cemeteries. It was brought to the Vatican in 1777 and was at that time placed in the Belvedere.