OBJECT IN FOCUS

Belial with SNAKES

Italy, Caserta, Cathedral of Calvi Vecchia?

c. 1190-1210

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This sculpture represents Belial, the untamed personification of darkness and wickedness. Belial appears in Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where Paul the Apostle contrasts him starkly with Christ: “What concord has Christ with Belial?” he writes. Belial emerges again in the Secret Revelation of John as a ruler of the underworld. And yet this figure does not arise solely from Christian imagination. Its iconography – the nude body entwined by a serpent – evolves from representations of Chronos, the ancient Greek embodiment of time itself.

Belial’s body, consumed by a snake, is carved on the main corner axis of a single, vertical marble block. Sculpted with bold dramatization – hair flying back and eyes staring wildly out at the viewer – there is nonetheless a refined sense of naturalism and of the articulation of joints and anatomy. Grasping at the serpent with both hands, he stands on a scrolling acanthus leaf within the tight confines of a shallow niche. Both Belial’s and the serpent’s eyes are filled with lead inserts. The scale, the slender form of the column, the design, showing a figure within an architectural niche, and the iconography are all forcefully characteristic of Campanian pulpit decoration of the twelfth century.

The figure almost certainly comes from the cathedral pulpit at Calvi Vecchia, near Capua. The pulpit was rebuilt following an earthquake in the eighteenth century and at that time elements were dispersed. This carving would have decorated either one of the two corners of the main body of the pulpit or it would have been placed in the centre of the front panel, beneath the lectern (which is now lost). The space between the upper and lower mouldings of the pulpit measures 83 cm. Allowing a few centimeters above and below for the binding material (mortar) the measurement fits with the height of the niche in which Belial stands, 78.3cm. The carving relates stylistically to the lions supporting the pulpit there and other sculptural elements including one of the cornerstones for the pulpit, which survives in situ. Nonetheless, the recomposed pulpit is an amalgamation of two different stylistic trends. The lions relate to carving on the pulpit at Caserta Vecchia. Other elements are more closely related to work at Capua. Stylistically this wonderful carving is also closely related to the work of one of the sculptors on the famous epistle pulpit at Salerno Cathedral which, together with the gospel pulpit also at Salerno, likely provided the model for the famous series of Campanian pulpits of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of which Calvi Vecchia was a shining example. The liturgical furnishings at Salerno are the most well preserved of all Campanian examples. The two pulpits at Salerno, the epistle and the gospel pulpit date to between 1175-c.1185. Salerno was an important city with a central position in Campania and provided the right setting for the development of a highly innovative and distinctive style of Campanian sculpture which is classicizing in nature.

Of the two Salerno pulpits, the present work is closest stylistically to the epistle pulpit, known as the ‘Ambone d’Ajello’ which predates the gospel pulpit whilst the iconography relates to the gospel pulpit. So close is it in style to the epistle pulpit carving that it may have been carved by the same sculptor. One can compare the figure of Belial to the Telamon figures in the southwest and southeast corners of the epistle pulpit. Like the Belial figure they have elongated bodies with slightly curvaceous hips, rib cages defined by similar groove lines, narrow legs, which are carved free of the niche, and comparable feet and hands. They too have deep-set drilled eyes and puffy lips and the figure on the southeast corner has a similar beard described with drill holes. Belial’s flame-like hair is comparable to that of Abyssus, on the underside of the lectern of the epistle pulpit at Salerno. The scrolling acanthus beneath the feet of Belial is crisply carved and compares closely to the acanthus on the north-east capital of the Salerno pulpit.

As Chuck Little has recently traced, the form of a nude male figure wrapped by a snake has its origins in the ancient worship of Zurvan-Chronos, the pre-Zoroastrian cult that went on to merge with the Greek myth surrounding the God Chronos. The deity, who already from an early date is depicted wrapped in the body of a serpent, is handsomely represented by a second-century Roman marble statue excavated at Mérida, and which is now in the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano there. The early Church considered Belial as the antithesis of Christ; he is described in this guise in Saint Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 6:15-16), and appears variously in Romanesque art as a warning counterbalance to salvation. The iconography of Belial held particular relevance for Campanian art in the period, and he appears again on the gospel pulpit at Salerno, and the pulpits at Caserta Vecchia, Sessa Aurunca and Gaeta in a similar guise to our version. Salerno is widely held to have provided the prime model from which the other surrounding versions were executed, and it was evidently the product of the highly civilized and intellectual milieu in Salerno in the last quarter of the twelfth century.

Provenance:

Almost certainly carved for the pulpit in the cathedral of Calvi Vecchia, Campania
T. L. Thirkle, Whorton (Wiltshire), by c. 1968
Tomasso Brothers, Leeds
Sam Fogg, London, acquired from the above in 2009
McCarthy Collection, Hong Kong, until 2025