Sarcophagus from Alcaudete

Fragment of a sarcophagus front with a double frieze of biblical scenes carved in subtle haut-relief. Above, on the left we see the raising of Lazarus, and on the right what may be Christ with the bleeding woman or Christ and Mary Magdalene, accompanied by a group of apostles. In the lower frieze, Daniel in the lions’ den is pictured on the right, and in the centre is David beheading Goliath between two groups of soldiers, Philistines and Israelites.
This piece was made by a local sculpture workshop in Hispania Baetica, the same that produced a few other known specimens like the sarcophagi found at Écija in Seville, La Chimorra in Córdoba, and Singilia Barba in Málaga.
The arrangement of the scenes in two friezes and much of the iconography reflects the sarcophagus-carving tradition of fourth-century Rome, although the local workshop added its own variations: for example, the episode of Daniel in the lions’ den is anomalously set inside a circle.