Skip to main content
Saint Thecla with Wild Beasts and Angels
Saint Thecla with Wild Beasts and Angels

Saint Thecla with Wild Beasts and Angels

CultureCoptic
Date5th century C.E.
MediumLimestone
DimensionsOverall: 3 3/4 × 25 1/2 inches (9.53 × 64.77 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust
Object number48-10
On View
On view
Gallery Location
  • 105
Collections
Exhibition History

Romans and Barbarians, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, December 17, 1976-February 27, 1977, no. 236.

 

The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 19, 1977-February 12, 1978.

 

Antioch: The Lost Ancient City, Worcester Art Museum, MA, October 7, 2000-February 4, 2001; Cleveland Museum of Art, March 18 – June 3, 2001; Baltimore Museum of Art, September 16 – December 30, 2001, no.


Byzantine Women and Their World, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, October 25, 2002-April 28, 2003.


Luxury: Treasures of the Roman Empire, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, July 9-October 2, 2016.


Provenance

Found in Oxyrhynchus or Ahnas [1];

 

With Paul Mallon, New York, by 1948;

 

Purchased from Mallon by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1948.

 

 

NOTES: 

 

[1] John Hermann and Anneweis van den Hoek, “116. Saint Thecla in the Arena,” in: Christine Kondoleon, Antioch: The Lost Ancient City, exh. cat. (Princeton University Press, 2000), 226.  

Published References

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 32.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 43.

 

Helmut Buschhausen, “Frühchristliches Silberreliquiar aus Isaurien,” Jahrbuch des österreichischen byzantinischen Gesellschaft 11, 12 (1962-63): 148, fig 6.

 

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 56.

 

J. Leibbrand, “Thekla,” in Lexicon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 8 (Rome: Herder, 1976), 433, fig. 1.

 

Cornelius Vermeule, Romans and Barbarians, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1976), 201-02, no. 236.

 

Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, “513. Roundel with St. Thecla,” in The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, ed. Kurt Weitzmann, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977), 574-75, (repro.). 

 

Kurt Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979), 574–75, (repro.).


Catherine Metzger, Les ampoules à eulogie du musée du Louvre, Notes et Documents des musées de France 3 (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1981), 13.

 

Claudia Nauerth and Rüdiger Warns, Thekla. Ihre Bilder in der frühchristlichen Kunst, Göttinger Orientforschungen, 2 Reihe, Studien zur spatantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst, Band 3 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1981), 26n4, 31-34, plate 7, fig. 14.

 

Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), (repro.).  

 

Dennis Macdonald and Andrew Scrimgeour, “Pseudo-Chrysostrom’s Panegyric to Thecla: The Heroine of the Acts of Paul in Homily and Art,” Semela 38 (1986): 158.

 

Rüdiger Warns, “Weitere Darstellungen der heiligen Thekla,” in Studien zur frühchristlichen Kunst II, Göttinger Orientforschungen, 2 Reihe, Studien zur spatantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst, Band 8, ed. Guntram Koch (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), 79.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 125.

 

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1996), fig. 95.

 

Eva Schurr, Die Ikonographie der Heiligen: Eine Entwicklungsgeschichte ihrer Attribute von den Anfängen bis zum achten Jahrhundert (Dettelbach: J. H. Röll, 1997), 212, 216, 218, 220, no. 7.

 

John Hermann and Anneweis van den Hoek, “116. Saint Thecla in the Arena,” in Antioch: The Lost Ancient City, ed. Christine Kondoleon, exh. cat. (Princeton University Press, 2000), 226-27, no. 116, (repro.).  

 

Christine Kondoleon, “The Lost City of Ancient Antioch,” Minerva 11, no. 5 (2000): 17, (repro.).

 

David Cartlidge and J. Keith Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha (New York: Routledge, 2001), 154-55, fig. 5.10.

 

Stephen Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford: University Press, 2001), 235, fig. 29.  

 

J. Kirsten Smith, “68. Medallion of Thekla Bound to Two Beasts,” in Byzantine Women and Their World, ed. Ioli Kalavrezou, exh. cat. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 136-37, (repro.).  

 

Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 162-64, fig. 1.

 

Carolyn Connor, Women of Byzantium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 9, fig. 1.

 

Helen Rhee, Early Christian literature: Christ and culture in the second and third centuries (New York: Routledge, 2005), (repro.).

 

Jeremy Barrier, “A Critical Introduction and Commentary on the Acts of Paul and Thecla,” (PhD diss., Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas: 2008), 96, fig. 21.

 

Anna Clark, Desire: A History of European Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 2008), 43, fig. 3.1.

 

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 21, fig. 55.

 

Jeremy W. Barrier, The Acts of Paul and Thecla, A Critical Introduction and Commentary, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2 Reihe (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 52n222, 62, fig. 15.

 

Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd Penner, Contextualizing Gender in Early Christian Discourse: Thinking beyond Thecla (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), (repro.).

 

Sheila Briggs, “Gender, Slavery, and Technology: The Shaping of the Early Christian Moral Imagination,” in Beyond Slavery: Overcoming its Religious and Sexual Legacies, ed. Bernadette Brooten (New York: Pallgrave Macmillan, 2010), 168-69, fig. 9.1.

 

Celal Şimşek and Barış Yener, “An Ivory Relief of Saint Thecla,” Adalya 13 (2010): 327.

 

Robert Cohon, “Saint Thecla Clothed as Aphrodite,” in American Research Center in Egypt Annual Conference, Abstracts, ed. Kathleen Scott (San Antonio, 2013), 31-32.

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.


And They are Wild Beasts, No. 5
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
1863
38-30/3
Birds and Beasts in a Flowery Landscape
Master Muhammad Siyah Qalam
late 15th century
43-6/2
Mirror with Beasts and Geometric Patterns
Warring States-Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.E.)
33-1470
recto overall
ca. 2375-2345 B.C.E.
52-7/2
recto overall
ca. 2375-2345 B.C.E.
52-7/1
Princess
ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E.
47-13
Servant Kneading Dough
ca. 2494-2345 B.C.E.
35-17