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Chapter 7: Late Antique Art
Key Notes
Time Period: 200–500 C.E.
Culture, beliefs, and physical settings
Late Antique art falls within the medieval artistic tradition.
Late Antique art is influenced by the needs of Christian worship.
Late Antique art is known for its avoidance of naturalistic forms.
Cultural Interactions
Late Antique art is heavily influenced by ancient art forms.
Late Antique art has many regional variations.
Audience, functions and patron
Connections with the divine are illustrated through iconography.
Theories and Interpretations
Late Antique art is generally studied chronologically.
Contextual information comes from written records that are religious or civic.
Historical Background
Jesus Christ founded Christianity in the first century C.E. His energetic preaching and mesmerizing message inspired devoted followers like Saints Peter and Paul to actively spread the message of Christian faith and forgiveness across the Roman world.
The New Testament's influential books and letters inspired peasants and philosophers alike.
Christianity had to hide in the Roman Empire to avoid persecution, but the number of converts grew until Christians became a majority.
The Church Peace began with Constantine's victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E.
In 313 C.E., Constantine returned Christians' confiscated property.
Edict of Milan, which allowed religious freedom across the Empire.
Constantine also appointed Christians to government positions and built Christian shrines.
With Constantine's approval, Christianity was becoming a state religion.
After emerging from the shadows, Christians built great churches to rival pagan Rome.
In the Late Antique period, paganism became an underground religion.
Patronage and Artistic Life
Most Christian art in the early centuries survives in the catacombs, buried beneath the city of Rome and other places scattered throughout the Empire.
Catacomb: an underground passageway used for burial
Christians were mostly poor—society’s underclass.
Artists imitated Roman works, but sometimes in a sketchy and unsophisticated manner.
Once Christianity became recognized as an official religion, however, the doors of patronage sprang open.
Christian artists then took their place alongside their pagan colleagues, eventually supplanting them.
Early Christian Art
Christianity is an intensely narrative religion deriving its images from the various books of the New Testament.
Christians were also inspired by parallel stories from the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures, and they illustrated these to complement Christian ideology.
The following episodes from the New Testament are most often depicted:
The Annunciation: The Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will be the virgin mother of Jesus.
The Visitation: Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth to tell her the news that she is pregnant with Jesus.
Because she is elderly, Elizabeth’s announcement of her own pregnancy is greeted as a miracle.
Elizabeth gives birth to Saint John the Baptist.
Christmas or the Nativity: The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.
Mary gives birth in a stable; her husband, Joseph, is her sole companion.
Soon after, angels announce the birth to shepherds.
Adoration of the Magi: Traditionally, three kings, who are also astrologers, are attracted by a star that shines over Jesus’s manger.
They come to worship him and present gifts.
Massacre of the Innocents: After Jesus is born, King Herod issues an order to execute all male infants in the hope of killing him.
His family takes him to safety in an episode called The Flight into Egypt.
Baptism of Jesus: John the Baptist, Jesus’s cousin, baptizes him in the Jordan River.
Jesus’s ministry officially begins.
Calling of the Apostles: Jesus gathers his followers, including Saint Matthew and Saint Peter, as his ministry moves forward.
Miracles: To prove his divinity, Jesus performs a number of miracles, like multiplying loaves and fishes, resurrecting the deceased Lazarus, and changing water into wine at the Wedding at Cana.
Giving the Keys: Sensing his own death, Jesus gives Saint Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, in effect installing him as the leader when he is gone, and therefore the first pope.
Transfiguration: Jesus transfigures himself into God before the eyes of his apostles; this is the high point of his ministry.
Palm Sunday: Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph, greeted by throngs with palm branches.
Last Supper: Before Jesus is arrested, he has a final meal with his disciples in which he institutes the Eucharist—that is, his body and blood in the form of bread and wine; at this meal he reveals that he knows that one of his apostles, Judas, has betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver.
Crucifixion: After a brief series of trials, Jesus is sentenced to death for sedition.
He is crowned with thorns, whipped with lashes, and forced to carry his cross through the streets of Jerusalem.
At the top of a hill called Golgotha he is nailed to the cross and left to die
Deposition/Lamentation/Entombment/Pieta: Jesus’s body is removed from the cross by his relatives, cleaned, mourned over, and buried.
Resurrection: On Easter Sunday, three days later, Jesus rises from the dead.
On Ascension Day he goes to heaven.
Also important are four author portraits of the Evangelists, who are the writers of the principal books, or gospels, of the New Testament.
Gospels: the first four books of the New Testament that chronicle the life of Jesus
These books are arranged in the order in which it was traditionally believed they were written: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Evangelist portraits appear often in medieval and Renaissance art, each associated with an attribute:
Matthew: angel or a man
Mark: lion
Luke: ox or calf
John: eagle
These attributes derive from the Bible (Ezekiel 1:5–14; Revelations 4:6–8) and were assigned to the four evangelists by great philosophers of the early church such as Saint Jerome.
Catacomb paintings, like the ones at Priscilla from the fourth century, show a sensitivity toward artistic programs rather than random images.
Jesus always maintains a position of centrality and dominance, but grouped around him are images that are carefully chosen either as Old Testament prefigurings or as subsidiary New Testament events.
Early Christians learned from ancient paintings to frame figures in either lunettes or niches.
Lunette: a crescent-shaped space, sometimes over a doorway, that contains sculpture or painting
When Christianity was recognized as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 C.E., Christ was no longer depicted as the humble Good Shepherd; instead he took on imperial imagery.
His robes become the imperial purple and gold, his crook a staff, his halo a symbol of the sun-king.
Orant figure: a figure with its hands raised in prayer
➼ Catacomb of Priscilla
Details
Late Antique Europe
200–400
Excavated tufa and fresco
Found in Rome, Italy
Form and Function
Catacombs are passageways beneath Rome that extend for about 100 miles and contain the tombs of 4 million dead.
They contain the tombs of seven popes and many early Christian martyrs.
The Priscilla catacomb has some 40,000 burials.
Context
Called Priscilla because she was the donor of the land for her family’s burial. It was then opened up to Christians.
Greek Chapel
Named for two Greek inscriptions painted on the right niche.
Three niches for sarcophagi.
Lower portions done in the first Pompeian style of painting with imitation marble paneling enriching the surface.
Upper portions decorated with paintings in later Pompeian styles: sketchy painterly brushstrokes.
Contains scenes of Old and New Testament stories.
Old Testament scenes show martyrs sacrificing for their faith.
New Testament scenes show miracles of Jesus.
Orant fresco
Fresco over a tomb niche set over an arched wall; cemetery of a family vault.
Central figure stands with arms outstretched in prayer; perhaps the same woman seen three times.
Figure is compact, dark, and set off from a light background with terse angular contours and emphatic gestures.
Figure prays for salvation in heaven.
Deeply set eyes—windows to the soul—staring upward implore God’s deliverance.
Left: painting of a teacher with children, or the image of a couple being married with a bishop.
At the right, mother and child, perhaps Mary with Christ or the Church.
Good Shepherd fresco
Early Christian art often shows parallels between Old and New Testament stories, which Christians see as a fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures and shows their interest in adapting them to their own context.
Restrained portrait of Christ as a Good Shepherd, a pastoral motif in ancient art going back to the Greeks.
Symbolism of the Good Shepherd: rescues individual sinners in his flock who stray.
Stories of the life of the Old Testament Prophet Jonah often appear in the lunettes; Jonah’s regurgitation from the mouth of a big fish is seen as prefiguring Christ’s resurrection.
Peacocks in lunettes symbolize eternal life; quails symbolize earthly life; Christ is seen as a bridge between these worlds.
Images
Early Christian Architecture
Christians, Jews, and pagans used these burial grounds because they found this a cheaper alternative to aboveground interment.
Christians preferred burial because it symbolized Jesus’s, as well as their own, rising from the dead—body and soul.
Catacombs were dug from the earth in a maze of passageways that radiated out endlessly from the starting point.
The poor were placed in loculi, which were holes cut in the walls of the catacombs meant to receive the bodies of the dead.
Loculi: openings in the walls of catacombs to receive the dead
Usually the bodies were folded over to take up less room.
The wealthy had their bodies blessed in mortuary chapels, called cubicula, and then often placed in extravagant sarcophagi.
Cubicula: small underground rooms in catacombs serving as mortuary chapels
After the Peace of the Church in 313 C.E., Christians understood how they could adapt Roman architecture to their use.
Basilicas, with their large, groin-vaulted interiors and impressive naves, were meeting places for the influential under the watchful gaze of the emperor’s statue.
Christians reordered the basilica, turning the entrance to face the far end instead of the side, and focused attention directly on the priest, whose altar was elevated in the apse.
The clergy occupied the perpendicular aisle next to the apse, called the transept.
Transept: an aisle in a church perpendicular to the nave, where the clergy originally stood
Male worshippers stood in the long main aisle called the nave; females stood in the side aisles with partial views of the ceremony.
Nave: the main aisle of a church
In this way, Christians were inspired by Jewish communities in which this gender division was standard.
A narthex, or vestibule, was positioned as a transitional zone in the front of the church.
Narthex: the closest part of the atrium to the basilica, it serves as vestibule, or lobby, of a church
An atrium was constructed in front of the building, framing the façade.
Atria also housed the catechumens, those who expressed a desire to convert to Christianity but had not yet gone through the initiation rites.
They were at once inside the church precincts but outside the main building.
On occasion, this overall design had the symbolic effect of turning the church into a cross shape.
Early Christian art has a “love/hate” relationship with its Roman predecessors.
These were the people who mercilessly cemented Christians into giant flowerpots, covered them with tar, ignited them, and used them to light the streets at night.
This was the world they knew: the grandeur, the excitement, the eternal quality suggested by mythical Rome.
Early Christian art used Roman elements to express Christianity and decorate the new faith.
Christianity, like most religions, dominated older forms of worship by forcing pagan architectural elements like columns to serve a new faith.
Santa Sabina used pagan temple Roman columns.
This type of reuse of architectural or sculptural elements is called spolia.
Spolia: in art history, the reuse of architectural or sculptural pieces in buildings generally different from their original contexts
Early Christian churches come in two types, both inspired by Roman architecture:
centrally planned and axially planned buildings.
Both church exteriors avoided pagan temple-like decoration and sculpture.
The more numerous axially planned buildings, like Santa Sabina, had a long nave focusing on an apse.
Apse: the endpoint of a church where the altar is located
The nave, used for processional space, was usually flanked by side aisles.
The first floor had columns lining the nave; the second floor contained a space decorated with mosaics; and the third floor had the clerestory, the window space.
Clerestory: the third, or window, story of a church
Early Christian basilicas have thin walls supporting wooden roofs with coffered ceilings
Coffer: in architecture, a sunken panel in a ceiling
Centrally planned buildings were inspired by Roman buildings such as the Pantheon.
The altar was placed in the middle of the building beneath a dome ringed with windows.
Men stood around the altar, women in the side aisle, called an ambulatory.
Ambulatory: a passageway around the apse or altar of a church
Central plan: a church having a circular plan with the altar in the middle
➼ Santa Sabina
Detail
Late Antique Europe
422–432
Made of brick, stone, and wooden roof
Found in Rome, Italy
Form
Three-aisled basilica culminating in an apse; no transept.
Long, tall, broad nave; axial plan.
Axial Plan: a church with a long nave whose focus is the apse; so-called because it is designed along an axis
Windows not made of glass, but selenite, a type of transparent and colorless gypsum.
Flat wooden roof; coffered ceiling; thin walls support a light roof.
Function
Early Christian parish church.
As in the Jewish tradition, men and women stood separately; the men stood in the main aisle, the women in the side aisles with a partial view.
Context
Spolia: tall slender columns taken from the Temple of Juno in Rome, erected on this site; a statement about the triumph of Christianity over paganism.
Bare exterior, sensitively decorated interior—represents the Christian whose exterior may be gross, but whose interior soul is beautiful.
Built by Peter of Illyria.
Patronage: According to an inscription in the narthex, the basilica was founded by Pope Celestine I (422–432).
Images
