Fragment of a lid of a Christian sarcophagus with an Epiphany Scene

The theme of the adoration of the Magi is extremely common in the lids of Christian sarcophagi, often in association with an episode from the Old Testament. In the fragment belonging to the Mattei collection the child is portrayed not as a newborn infant but as a child seated on Mary's lap, an iconography inspired by the apocryphal Gospels. The schematic rendering of the scene and some features of the representation date the work to the first half of the 4th c. AD.