In the National Maritime Museum in Haifa, Israel a sarcophagus is on display that has taken the Torlonia relief as an example. It is clearly not an ancient Roman relief. George Radan assigns the relief to the 16th century (Radan 1988; Radan 1990). However, it must have been made in the later 19th century or the early 20th at the latest. Many details have been taken from the Torlonia relief, altered somewhat, and placed in a different position. To the relief (in the top left corner, beneath elephants pulling a chariot) a copy was added of a Roman inscription. Clearly the sculptor had read a publication by Alberto Guglielmotti from 1866, in which both the Torlonia relief and the inscription are described (Guglielmotti 1866 (published; presented in 1864)).
Click to enlarge. The sarcophagus in the National Maritime Museum in Haifa.
Photo: Václav Dvořák.The first example used by the sculptor is the Torlonia relief, found on the Torlonia estate in 1863. The artist did not necessarily saw the original Torlonia relief himself: it was taken to Rome and probably not on public display. However, already in 1864 Guglielmotti mentions a cast and a photo, and published a detailed drawing made by the architect Giovanni Montiroli (Guglielmotti 1866, 4).
The inscription that the sculptor copied, QQ C F NAV, is on a different object. It is read on a relief, above a depiction of a ship with three sailors. This relief was also found on the Torlonia estate, in the same period, perhaps even together with the Torlonia relief. In 1864 Guglielmotti says: "scoperto appresso a questo" ("discovered near this one") (Guglielmotti 1866, 43). It was announced as a recent discovery in 1866 (B. Graser in the Bullettino dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, March 1866, 65), and mentioned in the catalogues of the Torlonia collection from 1880 and 1884. In the various versions of the catalogue of the Torlonia collection by Pietro Ercole Visconti it appears around numbers 339-345: a marble relief, measuring 0.64 x 0.62. Here the inscription is not mentioned. It also appears in Carlo Lodovico Visconti's catalogue from 1884-1885, as nr. 431, which does mention the inscription. Photos of both the Torlonia relief and the other relief are in the second volume of the latter catalogue, Tavola CX. The text was published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum in 1887, and explained as Q(uin)Q(uennales) C(orporis) F(abrum) NAV(alium) ("Presidents of the guild of the ship carpenters") (CIL XIV, 456).
C.L. Visconti 1884, Tav. CX.The modern sculptor also copied the horizontal line above QQ that is seen on this original. This line was not depicted by Guglielmotti, but can be seen in the catalogue of the collection published in 1884, and in the CIL, published in 1887. The presence of Tritons and Hercules shows that at least one more example was used.
The curator of the National Maritime Museum, Oren Cohen, informed me by email that the only information available about the history of the copy is, that it was received as a gift from Dr. Louis R. Soltery from New York on August 26 1975. The museum was established in 1953, based on the private collection of the founder and first manager, Aryeh Ben-Eli.
