Ethan Gannaway: Cock on a Column: Art, Ambrose, and Audience

Scholars have noted well the influence of the great Roman authors on Ambrose, citing especially and justly Vergil and Cicero.  Ambrose himself cites and references poets and philosophers, both specifically and generally.  Yet, research has tended to ignore art and its relationship with Ambrose.  In fact, when art appears in Ambrosian studies, scholars use it to show how Ambrose affected the art.  The best example of this practice is the late-fourth century Brescia casket.  The richly decorated ivory reliquary boasts a grand and complicated program of images, deciphered through the help of Ambrose’s works.

This paper, however, examines a specific and nebulous image from the Brescia casket, the so-called cock on the column, and what it says about the cock as portrayed in Ambrose’s hymn, Aeterne rerum conditor, and in his exegetical work, Hexameron 5.24.  By looking at the image’s received tradition, directly from sarcophagi and catacombs and indirectly from sources such as mosaic comparanda, one finds a nuanced meaning for the cock’s appearance on the Brescia casket and for its meaning for the viewer.  The discoveries in turn lead to lesser-studied authors in Ambrosian research, such as Lucian or Avienus.  The result is a polyvalent meaning for this image and an argument to cite the artistic tradition like the literary.  The image of the cock on the column provides an unused but valuable source to decipher the fuller significance of the cock’s role for Ambrose and his audience.