Frontal de sarcófago de Valcabrère con la adoración de los magos

This is a corner piece of a sarcophagus frontal made of Saint Béat marble with two scenes: in one of them a vailed woman is lying on a bed with her child; she greets two young men who are standing near her and offering her some fruit. In the other scene, a bearded man dressed in a tunic and a pallium is touching a lion with a roll in his left hand while he is talking to a naked woman who is praying. J. Guyon and C. Dieulafait think that the two scenes are pagan but the author disagrees. The woman with the child looks like the Virgin on the lid of Doria Pamphili sarcophagus and the two men standing near the bed resemble the two men near the Virgin on Saint Nazarius reliquary, although these are wearing a one sleeve (exomid) tunic. The Three Young Hebrews in the fires of Babylon on the sarcophagus 750 of Deichmann’s Repertorium are dressed in tunic and pallium; and since the Three Hebrews often symbolize the Magi, the clothes of the young men at Valcabrère seem less strange. On the other hand, the gifts of the Magi are spherical, like small breads or fruit in other works such as the Dyptic of the Five Parts of the cathedral of Milan. The character represented as a nude woman to the right of the Virgin´s bed should have been a nude man, since he is certainly the prophet Daniel praying in the lion´s den. The Valcabrère artist must have mistaken Daniel for a woman (Eve ?) because of his long hair in some sculptures and paintings; the bearded man would in this case be the First Person of the Trinity. The Valcabrère sarcophagus style is reminiscent of the Roman workshops of the Dogmatic Sarcophagus and the Two Brothers Sarcophagus but also of Eastern workshops as do the Castiliscar stone coffin and a Toulousian piece of the Nativity. It is probable that these three pieces – Castiliscar, Toulouse, Valcabrère – were done by the same workshop or in similar workshops during the same period. [Author with Ch. Roueché]