Il crocifisso “orfico-bacchico”. Ancora sull’antichità della gemma di Berlino (Furtwängler 1896, no. 8830)

With regard to the gem once preserved at the Berlin museums and currently lost, depicting a crucified figure with the inscription ΟΡΦΕΟΣ ΒΑΚΚΙΚΟΣ (Furtwängler 1896, no. 8830), this article aims at demonstrating that: 1) the depiction of the crucified man is probably the work of a modern carver, 2) the inscription ΟΡΦΕΟΣ ΒΑΚΚΙΚΟΣ is most likely a copy of an ancient epigraph (which occurs not surprisingly on other ancient gems without any depiction), as can be proved by both a philological and a paleographic analysis. The carver probably acted on commission from a member of the Roman élite (perhaps in the 18th century), to whom the association between Orpheus and Christ must have had a precise cultural-ideological significance. In its final part, the article recalls some of Lupieri’s remarks on Reception History, which support the iconographic analysis as a successful method in the resumption and/or reformulation of earlier representational models.