This important marble sarcophagus, a work of Roman art from the 2nd century, is one of the tombs that were reused in the Middle Ages for the burials of the Florentine patriciate, and once characterized the cemetery area surrounding the Baptistery and the Cathedral. This sarcophagus, along with a similar one displayed on the opposite side of the room, was originally placed inside the Cathedral during the medieval period. It was later mounted on large corbels on the façade of the nearby Compagnia dei Laudesi and, in the 19th century, exhibited in the courtyard of Palazzo Medici Riccardi. After a century, the sarcophagi were moved to either side of the Baptistery’s South Door. Removed following the 1966 flood, they were restored and later conserved in the Museum.

The sarcophagus is rectangular in shape, with a pitched, tiled roof lid and acroteria at the corners. The front features an architectural pediment with a portico, adorned with garlands, niches, and three arches; various figures are positioned between the columns. At the ends stand the Dioscuri brothers, Castor and Pollux, with fluttering cloaks and bridled horses. According to ancient myth, they were sons of Zeus and Leda and shared immortality; for this reason, they appear in Greco-Roman funerary art as companions of souls in the afterlife.

Next to them in the relief are a man in military attire and a veiled woman. In the center, a married couple is depicted clasping right hands in the ritual gesture of the dextrarum iunctio, symbolizing the act of marriage: he is shown wearing a toga, and she is veiled. On the sides, in bas-relief, we see on the right a classical figure, bare-chested, with a heifer and a sacrificial axe; on the left, a man-at-arms with a spear and Phrygian cap, presenting a chained, bare-chested, bearded prisoner—also wearing a Phrygian cap—to another figure in a toga, standing on a podium and holding a dagger.