Endnote 8 – Dining in Heaven

For the image as it appears in an earlier era, see Jean-Marie Dentzer, Le motif du banquet couché dans le Proche-Orient et le monde grec du VIIe au Ive siècle avant J,-C (Paris: Bibliothèque des Ecoles français d’Athènes et Rome, 1982). Late Roman examples of this kind seem to have Greek prototypes. See examples in Guntram Koch, Roman Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1988), entries 9, 33 and 34. A full catalogue with analysis was produced by Nikolaus Himmelmann, Typologische Untersuchungen an römischen Sarkophagreliefs des 3. and 4. Jahrhunderts nach Christus (Mainz: Zabern, 1973), pp. 24–28 and 47–66. Elzbieta Jastrzebowska has written the most important recent article on the subject, “Les scènes de banquet dans les peintures et sculptures chrétienennes des IIIe et Ive siècles,” Recherches Augustiennes 14 (1979), pp. 3–90, with catalogue and full bibliography.