Funerary art

In most instances, specialized funeral art was produced for the powerful and wealthy, although the burials of ordinary people might include simple monuments and grave goods, usually from their possessions.

[1] The treasure of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun, for example, though exceptionally lavish, was never intended to be seen again after it was deposited, while the exterior of the pyramids was a permanent and highly effective demonstration of the power of their creators.

[6] Related genres of commemorative art for the dead take many forms, such as the moai figures of Easter Island, apparently a type of sculpted ancestor portrait, though hardly individualized.

[23] During the Iron Age, the ancient Greeks did not generally leave elaborate grave goods, except for a coin to pay Charon, the ferryman to Hades, and pottery; however the epitaphios or funeral oration from which the word epitaph comes was regarded as of great importance, and animal sacrifices were made.

These were not intended as portraits, but during the Hellenistic period, realistic portraiture of the deceased was introduced and family groups were often depicted in bas-relief on monuments, usually surrounded by an architectural frame.

The two long sides show Alexander's great victory at the Battle of Issus and a lion hunt; such violent scenes were common on ostentatious classical sarcophagi from this period onwards, with a particular revival in Roman art of the 2nd century.

[38][39] From the 5th century, the mood changed to more sombre scenes of parting, where the deceased are shown leaving their loved ones,[40] often surrounded by underworld demons, and psychopomps, such as Charun or the winged female Vanth.

[44] Greek-style medallion portrait sculptures on a stela, or small mausoleum for the rich, housing either an urn or sarcophagus, were often placed in a location such as a roadside, where it would be very visible to the living and perpetuate the memory of the dead.

[48] By the late Republic there was considerable competition among wealthy Romans for the best locations for tombs, which lined all the approach roads to the city up to the walls, and a variety of exotic and unusual designs sought to catch the attention of the passer-by and so perpetuate the memory of the deceased and increase the prestige of their family.

The relief scenes of Hellenistic art became even more densely crowded in later Roman sarcophagi, as for example in the 2nd-century Portonaccio sarcophagus, and various styles and forms emerged, such as the columnar type with an "architectural background of columns and niches for its figures".

For a long time, literary references to jade burial suits were regarded by scholars as fanciful myths, but a number of examples were excavated in the 20th century, and it is now believed that they were relatively common among early rulers.

[61] The outsides of tombs often featured monumental brick or stone-carved pillar-gates (que 闕); an example from 121 CE appears to be the earliest surviving Chinese architectural structure standing above ground.

Lower down the social scale in the same period, terracotta haniwa figures, as much as a metre high, were deposited on top of aristocratic tombs as grave markers, with others left inside, apparently representing possessions such as horses and houses for use in the afterlife.

[75] Unlike many Western cultures, that of Mesoamerica is generally lacking in sarcophagi, with a few notable exceptions such as that of Pacal the Great or the now-lost sarcophagus from the Olmec site of La Venta.

Human remains within the roughly 1,000 excavated graves on the island (out of 20,000 total)[78] were found to be accompanied by glassware, slateware, or pottery, as well as one or more ceramic figurines, usually resting on the occupant's chest or held in their hands.

[79] The so-called shaft tomb tradition of western Mexico is known almost exclusively from grave goods, which include hollow ceramic figures, obsidian and shell jewelry, pottery, and other items (see this Flickr photo for a reconstruction).

[85]The Maya Naj Tunich cave tombs and other sites contain paintings, carved stelae, and grave goods in pottery, jade and metal, including death masks.

In dry areas, many ancient textiles have been found in graves from South America's Paracas culture, which wrapped its mummies tightly in several layers of elaborately patterned cloth.

Andean cultures such as the Sican often practiced mummification and left grave goods in precious metals with jewels, including tumi ritual knives and gold funerary masks, as well as pottery.

Other rulers were commemorated by memorial temples of the normal type for the time and place, which like similar buildings from other cultures fall outside the scope of this article, though Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the most spectacular of all, must be mentioned.

The stupa developed as a monument enclosing deposits of relics of the Buddha from plain hemispherical mounds in the 3rd century BCE to elaborate structures such as those at Sanchi in India and Borobudur in Java.

Persons of importance, especially monarchs, might be buried in a free-standing sarcophagus, perhaps surrounded by an elaborate enclosure using metalwork and sculpture; grandest of all were the shrines of saints, which became the destinations of pilgrimages.

The English upper classes ceased to commission altarpieces and other religious art for churches, but their tomb monuments continued to grow in size to fill the empty wall spaces; similar trends were seen in Lutheran countries, but Calvinists tended to be more disapproving of figure sculpture.

[120] By the 19th century, many Old World churchyards and church walls had completely run out of room for new monuments, and cemeteries on the outskirts of cities, towns or villages became the usual place for burials.

[121] The rich developed the classical styles of the ancient world for small family tombs, while the rest continued to use gravestones or what were now usually false sarcophagi, placed over a buried coffin.

[122] In Italy at least, funerary sculpture remained of equal status to other types during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and was made by the leading artists, often receiving reviews in the press, and being exhibited, perhaps in maquette form.

[131] In the Persian sphere, a tradition of relatively small mausoleums evolved, often in the shape of short hexagonal or octagonal domed towers, usually containing a single chamber, like the Malek Tomb.

The sarcophagi (often purely symbolic, as the body is below the floor) may be draped in a rich pall, and surmounted by a real cloth or stone turban, which is also traditional at the top of ordinary Turkish gravestones (usually in stylised form).

[139] Some war memorials, especially in countries like Germany, have had a turbulent political history, for example the much-rededicated Neue Wache in Berlin[140] and the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which is internationally controversial.

[141] Several critics detect a crisis in public memorial style from 1945, when the traditional figurative symbolic language, and evocation of nationalist values, came to seem inadequate, especially in relation to genocide, at least on the Western side of the Iron Curtain.