Funerary iconography and its signification in christianization context of the Early Christian world

Abstract

This article deals with the beginnings of Christian art in the 3rd century. It analyses possible reasons for the choice of the themes and asks after the commissioners of catacomb paintings and sarcophagi. The most frequent themes in catacombs and sarcophagi are compared and examined with respect to similarities and differences. The sequence of images of Peter is a peculiarity of the sarcophagi and can be explained by the will and the self-concept of the commissioners, who very often were from the upper class of society. The deliberate turning away from themes borrowed from pagan art and the choice of a thematic focus on New Testament scenes show that the commissioners of sarcophagi belonged to an intellectual elite. Gold glasses with Christian images, produced contemporarily with the catacomb paintings and the sarcophagi, vary flamboyantly in the choice of numerous images of saints. Possibly their choice was determined by the use of these glasses in the context of celebrations of martyrs and of the Refrigerium, as some inscriptions indicate. Nevertheless, they were also used in a domestic context.