# The Projecta Casket > Unknown Roman silversmiths' workshop - c. 380 (British Museum's current dating for this object specifically) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-roman-silversmiths-workshop-4th-century/projecta-casket-british-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-30 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Roman silversmiths' workshop - **Date:** c. 380 (British Museum's current dating for this object specifically) - **Medium:** Silver, parcel-gilt (silver with gilding), worked in repousse and chased, with engraved and pointille (punched-dot) inscriptions - **Dimensions:** Height 28.60 cm; width 23.40 cm at base, 48.80 cm at the widest point; length 33.20 cm at base, 56 cm at the longest point; weight 8,200 g - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** Late Roman, 4th century AD - **Current location:** British Museum, London - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A silver-gilt bridal casket of about 380 CE, part of the Esquiline Treasure found on Rome's Esquiline Hill in 1793 and bought by the British Museum in 1866 with the rest of the Duc de Blacas's collection. Its lid rim carries a Christian wedding inscription naming a couple, Secundus and Proiecta (the museum's own transcription of the name), while the box itself is covered in resolutely pagan imagery: Venus at her toilette, nereids riding sea monsters, and a procession of bathing and dressing scenes read as preparation for a Roman wedding.The combination has driven half a century of argument over who Secundus and Projecta actually were, whether the couple's household was pagan, Christian or comfortably both, and whether the box was made in one commission for one wedding or assembled from a workshop's stock of mythological panels. None of the three questions is settled. The casket has never been sold since it left Italy in the early nineteenth century; its only market transaction was as part of a single institutional purchase of an entire private collection. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 350-400** A Roman workshop, probably at Rome `[documented]` (origin) The casket, the domed Muse Casket and a set of silver Tyche furniture fittings from the same find are attributed to one workshop on stylistic and technical grounds. Kathleen Shelton dates the wider treasure to a span of about 330-370, drawn from more than one generation of a family's accumulated silver; the British Museum's own current online catalogue instead dates this specific object to 'about 380', following Alan Cameron's argument tying the casket to the Damasus epitaph for a woman named Projecta who died in 383. The two datings are not reconciled in the sources consulted. - **-1793** Unknown (buried in a Roman house on or near the Esquiline Hill) `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is named for the roughly four centuries between manufacture and discovery. No coins were recovered with the hoard, so there is no independent check on when it went into the ground. Kent and Painter's suggestion that it was buried shortly before Alaric's sack of Rome in 410 is a proposal drawn from the treasure's apparent completeness and the general pattern of the period, not a documented fact. - **1793** Found on the grounds of the convent of San Francesco di Paola ai Monti, Esquiline Hill, Rome `[documented]` (discovery) The British Museum's own findspot field reads: 'Found/Acquired: San Francesco di Paola ai Monti, convent building (ruin of) (grounds)'. The first surviving scholarly notice was made a year later, in 1794, by the antiquarian Ennio Quirino Visconti, later head of the Capitoline Museum. Ronald Ridley's 1996 article in The Antiquaries Journal, built around a previously unpublished letter, is the source this record could identify for filling gaps in the 1793-94 record, but this record accessed only its abstract and a short extract, not the full text. - **1793-by 1793** Bishop (later Cardinal) Giulio Maria della Somaglia `[documented]` (recovery and sale on behalf of the convent) The British Museum's own database lists 'Monsignor Guilio Maria della Somaglia' among the object's previous owners. A secondary Italian-language account (romanoimpero.com), not independently checked against Ridley 1996 or any primary record, adds that workmen tried to sell the find privately and that della Somaglia intervened and arranged a sale to benefit the convent. This record treats the bare fact of della Somaglia's involvement as documented (it is in the museum's own field) and the specific narrative of workmen and interception as unverified beyond that one secondary source. - **1793-by 1827** Baron von Schellerscheim, a Prussian resident in Florence `[documented]` (purchase) The British Museum's own database lists 'Baron von Schellerscheim' among the object's previous owners, without a date. The same secondary account (romanoimpero.com) gives a price: about 1,014 ounces of silver valued at 1,115.40 scudi, plus a small premium for its antiquity, for a total of 1,450 scudi to the convent. That the treasure was priced substantially as bullion, by weight, rather than as recognised art, is consistent with how little was then known about it; the precise figures are not corroborated in any other source consulted. - **by 1827-1839** Pierre Louis Jean Casimir de Blacas d'Aulps, 1st Duc de Blacas d'Aulps (1770/71-1839), French ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies `[documented]` (purchase) Schellerscheim resold the treasure to Blacas by 1827, per the same secondary account. The 1st Duc died in 1839. - **1839-1866** Louis, 2nd Duc de Blacas d'Aulps, by inheritance `[documented]` (inheritance) The collection passed to the 1st Duc's son on his father's death in 1839. The 2nd Duc died in Venice in 1866; it was his estate that sold the family's entire collection of antiquities to the British Museum. The British Museum's own acquisition field for this object reads 'Purchased from: Louis, Duc de Blacas d'Aulps', which names the 2nd Duc's estate as the immediate seller. - **1866-present** British Museum, London `[documented]` (purchase) The British Museum's own database records 'Acquisition date: 1866' and 'Purchased from: Louis, Duc de Blacas d'Aulps'. Sir Charles Newton examined the whole Blacas collection in France on the Museum's behalf; the purchase was debated in the House of Commons on 18 February 1867, where the government's initial offer of 45,000 pounds was refused, a final price of 48,000 pounds was agreed, and 2,221 pounds was deducted for reserved duplicate specimens, for a Parliamentary vote of 45,721 pounds for the collection as a whole (not this object alone). The same Commons debate singles out, without a clear identifying description, 'a casket of considerable size, ornamented with silver, and holds the entire toilette service in solid silver of a Roman lady' found on the Esquiline in 1793 as one of the collection's outstanding pieces; this record cannot confirm whether the speaker meant the Projecta Casket itself or its companion, the Muse Casket, which is the piece that actually held a set of silver toilet vessels inside it. ## Exhibitions - Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (recorded by the British Museum as 'Early Christian Art'), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (18 Nov 1977 - 12 Feb 1978), 1977-1978 - Dalla Terra Alle Genti, Sala dell'Arengo, Rimini, Italy (30 Mar - 13 Nov 1996), 1996 - The Enduring Image, National Museum, New Delhi, India (13 Oct 1997 - 5 Jan 1998), 1997-1998 - The Enduring Image, Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Hall, Mumbai, India (9 Feb - 3 May 1998), 1998 - Constantine the Great, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier, Germany (2 Jun - 4 Nov 2007), 2007 - Byzantium 330-1453 AD, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (25 Oct 2008 - 22 Mar 2009), 2008-2009 - Le Bain et le Miroir: Soins du corps et cosmetiques de l'Antiquite au Moyen Age, Musee de Cluny, Paris, France (20 May - 21 Sep 2009), 2009 - Tradition Transformed: Late Roman and Early Byzantine Treasures from the British Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, USA (11 Nov 2012 - 25 Aug 2013), 2012-2013 ## Literature - Kathleen J. Shelton, The Esquiline Treasure, London, British Museum Publications, 1981. - O.M. Dalton, Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities and Objects from the Christian East in the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography of the British Museum, London, 1901. - David Buckton (ed.), Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, London, British Museum Press, 1994. - T. Richard Blurton, The Enduring Image: Treasures from the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, 1997. - Sonja Marzinzik, Masterpieces: Early Medieval Art, London, British Museum Press, 2013. - Antony Eastmond, The Glory of Byzantium and Early Christendom, London, Phaidon, 2013. - Kurt Weitzmann (ed.), Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979. - J.P.C. Kent and K.S. Painter (eds.), Wealth of the Roman World: Gold and Silver, AD 300-700, London, British Museum Press, 1977. - Robin Cormack and Maria Vassilaki (eds.), Byzantium 330-1453, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 2008. - Jas Elsner, 'Visualising Women in Late Antique Rome: The Projecta Casket', in C. Entwistle (ed.), Through a Glass Brightly: Festschrift for David Buckton, Oxford, Oxbow, 2003, pp. 22-36. - Richard Hobbs, The Mildenhall Treasure: Late Roman Silver Plate from East Anglia, London, British Museum Press, 2016. - Cavan Howells, A Catalogue of the Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum, London, British Museum Press, 2015. - Alan Cameron, 'The Date and the Owners of the Esquiline Treasure', American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985), pp. 135-145. - Kathleen J. Shelton, 'The Esquiline Treasure: The Nature of the Evidence', American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985), pp. 147-155. - M.J. Hughes and J.A. Hall, 'X-ray Fluorescence Analysis of Late Roman and Sassanian Silver', Journal of Archaeological Science 6 (1979), pp. 321-344. - Exhibition catalogue, Milano capitale dell'impero Romano 286-402 d.C., Palazzo Reale, Milan, 24 January - 22 April 1990. - Jas Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2007. ## Open questions - Is the Projecta of the casket the same woman commemorated in Pope Damasus's epitaph for a Projecta who died in 383, wife of a man the epitaph calls 'Primus'? Alan Cameron reads this as wordplay identifying her husband as L. Turcius Secundus; Kathleen Shelton argues they are two different women named Projecta. Neither position is settled. - What is the casket's actual date? The British Museum's own current online catalogue gives 'about 380' for this object specifically, following Cameron, while continuing to date the Muse Casket and other pieces in the same find to Shelton's broader range of about 330-370. The treasure has not, on the evidence available to this record, been given a single agreed date. - Was the casket made as one commission for one wedding, or is it, with the rest of the hoard, family silver accumulated across more than one generation? Current scholarship leans toward accumulation for the treasure as a whole, while treating the casket and the Muse Casket specifically as a likely matched wedding pair on visual grounds alone. - What is the true sequence and date of ownership between the 1793 discovery and the 1827 sale to the Duc de Blacas? The specific names (della Somaglia, Schellerscheim), the prices and the weights given in this record come from one secondary Italian-language account and are not independently checked here against Ronald Ridley's 1996 primary study, which this record could access only as an abstract. - Why does the casket's modern weighed mass (8,200 g) exceed what its own ancient inscription states (22 Roman pounds, 3 and a half ounces, which converts to roughly 7,200-7,300 g using published values for the Roman pound of about 322-329 g)? The gap of some 900-1,000 g, on the order of 12-14 percent, is not explained in any source consulted; it could reflect a later repair that added metal, or uncertainty in the ancient weight standard. - Has an electrotype facsimile of the Projecta Casket ever been substituted for the original on display? This record searched specifically for evidence of this and found none: the object's own British Museum accession record describes it, by object type and materials, as the original silver-and-gold casket rather than an electrotype, unlike other Museum holdings that are explicitly catalogued as electrotypes. The lead photograph for this record, taken in the Museum's Room 41 in 2014, is treated as showing the original casket on that basis. - Was the treasure buried in response to the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410? This is a proposal in older literature based on the apparent completeness of the hoard, not a conclusion supported by any dated object, coin or other independent evidence found with it. ## Sources - [1] British Museum, Collection Online, 'casket' [The Projecta Casket], museum number 1866,1229.1, consulted directly at www.britishmuseum.org (page content and the site's own object API), including description, dimensions, inscriptions, curator's comments, bibliography, exhibition history, acquisition and previous-owner fields, and the conservation treatment log. - [2] British Museum, object API response for H_1866-1229-1 (the same record's underlying data feed), read directly via the Museum's own site. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Esquiline Treasure', read in full, including its account of the 1793 discovery, the Blacas acquisition, the Damasus epitaph and its Latin text, the Cameron/Shelton dating dispute, and the Christian/pagan iconography discussion. Tertiary source, consolidating Kent and Painter 1977, Cameron 1985 and Shelton 1985; flagged for replacement with those primary articles. - [4] Ronald T. Ridley, 'The Finding of the Esquiline Silver Treasure: An Unpublished Letter', The Antiquaries Journal 76 (1996), pp. 215-222. Accessed as an abstract and short extract only; the full text is paywalled and was not read for this record. - [5] Jas Elsner, 'Visualising Women in Late Antique Rome: The Projecta Casket', in Through a Glass Brightly: Festschrift for David Buckton (Oxford: Oxbow, 2003), accessed as a preview with abstract and partial text via academia.edu. The full chapter was not read for this record. - [6] romanoimpero.com, 'Il Tesoro dell'Esquilino (Roma)'. An enthusiast Italian-language history site, read for its account of the 1793-1866 chain of custody (della Somaglia, Schellerscheim, the Blacas family). Secondary source without visible inline citation of its own; flagged for replacement with Ridley 1996 in full. - [7] The Byzantine Legacy, 'Esquiline Treasure at the British Museum', read for construction detail (hinges, corner braces, the restored area of the lid) and comparison to the Traprain Law hoard for dating. Secondary specialist source. - [8] UK Parliament, Historic Hansard, House of Commons, 'Supply Considered in Committee', 18 February 1867, read directly for the Blacas collection purchase debate, the sums voted, Charles Newton's examination of the collection, and the description of an Esquiline casket presented to the House. - [9] M.J. Hughes and J.A. Hall, 'X-ray Fluorescence Analysis of Late Roman and Sassanian Silver', Journal of Archaeological Science 6 (1979), pp. 321-344. Existence, scope (about 200 EDXRF analyses of Late Roman and Sassanian silver, including hoard material) and headline findings (average silver fineness around 95 percent; compositional differences between joined parts of single objects) confirmed via the British Museum's own citation of this paper and the publisher's abstract; the full article was not read for this record. - [10] World History Encyclopedia, 'The Projecta Casket' (image entry by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, 2016). Tertiary, popular source, read for its brief iconographic description. - [11] Wikimedia Commons file pages and API records for the five images used in this record's gallery, read directly for licence, author, date and category data: File:Esquiline Treasure (1).JPG, File:Esquiline Treasure (4).JPG, File:Arte tardoantica da roma, caschetto di projecta, 380 circa, 01.JPG, File:Arte tardoantica da roma, caschetto di projecta, 380 circa, 02.JPG, and File:2024-03-05 British Museum 51.jpg. - [12] Alan Cameron, 'The Date and the Owners of the Esquiline Treasure', American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985), pp. 135-145. Not read directly; his arguments and characterisation of the Damasus epitaph as 'typically lame and frigid' are drawn from Wikipedia's citation and summary of this article. - [13] Kathleen J. Shelton, 'The Esquiline Treasure: The Nature of the Evidence', American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985), pp. 147-155. Not read directly; her counter-argument to Cameron is drawn from Wikipedia's citation and summary of this article and from the British Museum's own bibliography for the object. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.