Missorium of Theodosius I
The Missorium of Theodosius I is a large ceremonial silver dish preserved in the Real Academia de la Historia, in Madrid, Spain.
It is the largest and most elaborate, and the most famous, of the 19 surviving vessels believed to represent largitio ("largesse") or a "ceremonial gift given by the emperor to a civil or military official".
The two co-emperors have decorated tablions (patches showing rank attached to their main garment) at their knees, or possibly Epigonations (unattached ceremonial "handkerchiefs", which survive as an Eastern Orthodox vestment).
Their offerings are held in hand-cloths, just as the official uses his clothes to receive his gift; it was considered disrespectful to hold bare hands out to the emperor.
The recipient may well be the official represented on the dish (possibly a generalized figure, especially if the design was made in several copies, which we cannot judge), and the find-spot in Spain, Theodosius's home province, suggests it was one of his Spanish friends or relations.
An inscription along the side of the rim makes it possible to identify him with certainty: d(ominus) n(oster) theodosivs perpet(uus) avg(ustus)ob diem felicissimvm X; “Our Lord Theodosius, emperor forever, on the most happy occasion of the tenth anniversary (of his reign).” The inscription indicates that the dish was made at the time of the decennalia of an emperor named Theodosius.
Meischner constitutes this interpretation by describing the Missorium as a work of distinctive style, quality of execution and workmanship seen in exemplary examples of Western Roman Empire.
On the basis of the epigraphic evidence (a XV, as proposed by Alicia Canto, see above and below), she believes that it was most likely commissioned by Galla Placidia and produced in Ravenna in around 421 AD as a gift to her nephew Theodosius II.
She concedes the reading of the Roman numerals inscribed on the missorium by Alicia Canto in her detailed study (that was presented in the same Madrid conference),[17] as ‘quindecennalia’ the fifteenth imperial anniversary, as opposed to the common reading of decennalia, gives us of a new perspective and reassessment of the history, the circumstances of the Missorium’s commission by Galla Placidia and its intended functions and unresolved provenance.
The dish is a leading example of the style of the so-called "Theodosian Renaissance", along with the base of the Obelisk of Theodosius in Istanbul and the fragments surviving of his triumphal column there.
[18] Despite limitations in terms of anatomical correctness, and a "soft, rubbery quality" in the nude bodies, the style has "an element of studied classicism" as well as "an insistence on clear, continuous and simplified outline, on neatness and regularity" in the figure of Terra/Tellus, so that "Classicist form is oddly paired with linear abstract order", the latter more prominent in the upper zone, to lend an air of authority and "timelessness and absolute stability" to the imperial figures that was not required below.
