Four seasons altar of Würzburg

As Würzburg four years a Roman altar altar decorations is called, of about the year 40 AD dated from the period.

The Würzburg Four Seasons altar was in 1886 at the Pincio on the site of the former Horti Sallustiani ( Sallustische gardens ), an area that belonged to the Roman emperors found. Immediately, the altar was published, but was quickly and disappeared for a long time. Later it turned out that the altar for decades in an American private collection had been found. In 1966 he reappeared in Rome, in the antiques trade of the art dealer Giorgio Fallani on. He was acquired by Erika Simon, who again saw the lost altar, for the department of antiquity Martin von Wagner Museum in Würzburg. The Italian government could make no more claim to the work after eighty years. Almost the work would come in the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities, after Simon Friedrich Matz the younger drew attention to the altar, and this pointed the director of the West Berlin collection Adolf Greifenhagen to the work. But despite major funds Fallani sold by a given word the altar to Würzburg.

The round altar shows at regular intervals four glyphs that are to be seen to symbolize the four seasons based on their attributes. Winter is dressed as a farm laborer and also has a slaughtered animal and a wine amphora attention to activities in the winter. The other three personifications allude to deities are symbolic as well as in the written tradition in Ovid and Lucretius about for seasons. A flower garland recalls the spring deities Venus and Flora, ears of corn and poppy refer to the goddess of fertility and the summer Ceres. The Putte of autumn reminiscent of a satyr and is also equipped with a basket of grapes. Thus symbolizes the wine god Bacchus and autumn. The winter and spring cherubs are like the autumn and summer cherubs facing each other. The altar was probably meant less for religious purposes, but rather moody jewelry of a park. In the early imperial period also imperial prince as cherubs were represented, hence a beyond the jewelry value propagandistic statement is possible, aiming at a positive development of the Julio- Claudian house.

The season of finely crystalline white marble altar has a height of 73 centimeters and a diameter of 56.4 centimeters. Apart from minor nicks he is completely preserved. The winter representing putto was not further elaborated by damage during chiselling at the dead animal. The altar is in frühclaudische time around the year dated 40 AD. He has the inventory number H 5056th