The beginnings of Christian art: definition process and evolution of meanings

Abstract

Christian art did not arise suddenly, nor did it adopt a revolutionary and self language. It took place slowly and cautiously in late antique figurative culture, and did not really come out before the first half of the 3rd century. The artistic location in which it stands is represented by bird’s eye view scenes in which figures of peasants, shepherds and sacrificers, and scenes of banquet and fishing provide a repertory file especially abundant in a small group of Roman pictorial monuments: the Aureli’s hypogeum in Viale Manzoni, the mausoleum of Clodius Hermes and the tomb of Atimetus at S. Sebastian. Homeric themes, in the kind of transition, pleasant environment, orchards, country villas, propitiatory and bucolic idylls, are associated with “large pastoral” and “marine compositions” from ancient sarcophagi, but also with incidents of private life, mourning, and paradisiacal state. The very first Christian themes are inserted within this broad context of cosmic topics, in the sarcophagi of Jonah and S....