Análise do altar funerário de Iulia Victorina: projeção de maturidade e deificação

Abstract

The funerary altar under analysis refers to Iulia Victorina, a Roman girl dead at ten years old during the late 1st century AD On opposite sides of the altar there is a representation with two faces physiognomically similar but of different ages and each one has an emblem above of the head with astral symbols: in the younger image the girl is crowned with a crescent moon, in the older image, with solar rays. The aspects that points in this monument to the inventiveness of the Romans and their capacity to materialize a imaginative image is the guiding thread of this research. The concept of projection of maturity, if we understand that the image of the older woman is actually a representation of older Iulia Victorina is central in this regard. The projection and the invention in the monument serve to create a poetic reality about what did not happen, but which could have happened. The context of the use of the projection of maturity and examples of other funerary monuments of the time will be used with the intention to explain: what are the possible meanings intrinsic to the representation of a person deceased from the perspective of a projected maturity? What kind of maturity would that be? And, in opposition to the image of Iulia child what kind of narrative does his older image propose? In addition, other questions matter to this study concerning the possible meanings that the use of these two stars could mean in this funeral monument, what are the probable references used in the iconographic choice of this altar and what senses can be apprehended from them