Getty Adds to Antiquities With Third-Century Work, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Pacific Palisades, Calif. - A sarcophagus, Getty’s second antiquities purchase since 2006.

According to the New York Times the J. Paul Getty Museum announced Wednesday that it had acquired a third-century Roman marble sarcophagus that includes a detailed relief carving of a Dionysiac vintage festival. It is the museum’s second antiquities purchase since it adopted a new, stricter policy on buying ancient objects in 2006.

The sarcophagus, which was bought from a private collector in London for an undisclosed sum, is to go on display at the Getty Villa next Thursday as the centerpiece of a new installation focused on wine and wine-making, Karol Wight, a senior curator of antiquities at the museum, said in an interview at the Getty Villa.

The acquisition was announced the same day that the Association of Art Museum Directors issued new guidelines tightening its recommended restrictions on how its members collect antiquities. The Getty already follows a similar but stricter policy, which requires that it obtain documentation or substantial evidence that an artifact was removed from its country of origin before Nov. 17, 1970, or that it was legally exported from there after that date and legally imported to the United States. (The museum group’s recommendations give members discretion on whether to heed the 1970 cutoff.) The Getty’s first purchase under the new policy was last year.

In the case of “Sarcophagus Representing a Dionysiac Vintage Festival,” as the work is known, Ms. Wight said the museum consulted an 1881 scholarly work that places the piece in France in the collection of François de Corcelle, a former French ambassador to Rome, who acquired it there in 1852.

The earliest scholarly reference to the sarcophagus, from 1808, documented it as residing in the Villa Rondinini in Rome. It was in France in the possession of the descendants of de Corcelle until 1994, when it was sold at auction at Christie’s in London to a private collector, who sold it to the Getty.

The sculptor of the sarcophagus is unknown, but Ms. Wight said the work fit into the sculptural tradition of Rome in the late third century. Its relief scene includes 11 cupids harvesting and stomping on grapes to make wine in a lenos, a long trough similar to the sarcophagus itself. Two lions, at each end of the relief panel and with door knockers in their mouths, appear to have been carved using running drills, another reflection of a late-third-century style.

The sarcophagus, which was carved from a single piece of marble but is missing its lid, was apparently later used as a watering trough for horses, Ms. Wight said. That accounts for a lead pipe that was added to the bottom of one end as a drain and plaster that was used for waterproofing on the interior.