This man and woman look as if they’re having a casual conversation on a comfortable couch. Notice the wonderfully carved S-shaped sides and back. This is actually the lid of a stone sarcophagus. The Romans adopted this kind of funerary sculpture from their neighbors, the Etruscans, who often commemorated their dead with similar recumbent figures. You will see many of them on the stone sarcophagi and urns in the nearby Etruscan gallery.

Here, the man is depicted as a river god. He is partly naked, and holds a bunch of tall, slender reeds in his left arm. A scaly reptile crawls out from beneath him. The woman is shown as the earth goddess, Tellus. Notice the garland of wheat that she holds, and the child who sits astride a small mammal at her feet. In antiquity, Tellus and the river gods were associated with fertility.

Some Roman stone yards had sarcophagi carved and ready for purchase. Occasionally, sculptors left the heads on the lids unfinished. This way, clients could commission an artist to carve their own portraits on the reclining figures. You must have noticed that the head of the man on this lid is the only one of the two that is actually finished. Most likely, he—the husband—died first. And, for some reason, his wife’s head was never completed. Perhaps, she decided not to be buried with him in the end.

Take a closer look at the head of the man, particularly the naturalistic stippling of his hair and beard. It brings to mind the head of the Roman Emperor Caracalla displayed nearby in this gallery. Roman artists achieved this effect with short strokes of the chisel across the surface of the stone. The technique is characteristic of late Severan sculpture from the early third century A.D.