Statuette of the Good Shepherd

The ‘Good Shepherd’ was a favored image of early Christians: a gentle figure bearing a lamb, drawn from both pastoral Roman models and Jesus’s parable of the lost sheep. This small marble, made for a tomb or house shrine, keeps the classical calm—short cloak, staff, balanced stride—while recoding its meaning as divine care and rescue. The modest scale and friendly naturalism make the sacred intimate, avoiding overt crucifixion imagery in a period before monumental church sculpture. It is a bridge between cultures: a Roman type re-read as Christian promise, where tenderness, not triumph, leads the eye and heart.