the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Christ in Art
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or CHRIST IN ART
i. Symbols.—The representation of Christ by means of symbols is not earlier than that by means of pictures. There are found in the Catacombs at Rome at the commencement of Christian art not only the Fish symbol, but also pictures of the Good Shepherd, and of our Lord in certain Gospel scenes, all before the middle of the 2nd cent.; and of these the Good Shepherd carrying a sheep occurs in the Catacomb of Domitilla before the end of the 1st century, ft will be, however, convenient to begin with the Symbols, proceeding thence through the Types to more direct representations of Christ.
1. The Fish was the most popular symbol of our Lord in the middle of the 2nd cent., and continued so till the end of the 4th, when it suddenly went out of use. More than one cause made it so general. Originating as an acrostic (the Greek word for ‘fish,’ ΙΧΘΥΣ, standing for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ), it formed a most convenient secret sign among the Christians, being readily understood by the initiated as representing Christ in the fulness of His divinity. It carried with it also the thought of the sacramental feeding upon the Son of God, which is so prominent in early Christian art: e.g. the two paintings in the crypt of Lucina, which belong to the middle of the 2nd cent., and represent two baskets of bread, each containing a glass cup of wine and resting upon a fish. The earliest known representation of this symbol is even more significant: it occurs in the Fractio Panis fresco, recently discovered by Wilpert in the Catacomb of Priscilla, which belongs to the beginning of the 2nd cent., and is a picture of a primitive celebration of the Communion,—seven people are seated at a table on which lie live loaves, two fishes, and a two-handled mug, while the bishop or president at the end of the table is in the act of breaking a loaf. In this deeply interesting picture of the Eucharist we see a further reason why the Fish symbol was felt to be appropriate; it carried the mind to the miracle of the loaves and fishes, which was an early type of the Eucharist because of John 6:9-59. The Fish symbolizes not only the Eucharist, but the sacrament of Baptism as well; this is brought out by the common representation of a fish as swimming in the water (see below under ‘Symbolic Scenes’). ‘We little fishes,’ says Tertullian (de Bapt. i.), ‘after the example of our Ichthus Jesus Christ, are born in water.’ Cf. St. Clement below, under ‘Other Symbols.’ This double symbolism is tersely expressed in the 2nd cent, inscription of Abercius recently discovered by Ramsay at Hierapolis:—‘… everywhere was faith my guide, and gave me everywhere for food the Ichthus from the spring.’
2. Other Symbols.—The Fish was early combined with other symbols, such as the Dove, the Cross, the Ship, the Shepherd, and especially with the Anchor, the combination of the Fish and the Anchor (first found on the sarcophagus of Livia Primitiva about the middle of the 2nd cent.) being a hieroglyph for the common epitaph ‘Spes in Christo.’
There is an early mention of Christian symbols in St. Clement of Alexandria (Paed. iii. 11): ‘Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either a dove, or a fish, or a ship running before the wind, or a musical lyre, the device used by Polycrates, or a ship’s anchor, which Selencus had carved upon his signet. And if the device represent a man fishing, it will remind us of an apostle, and of children drawn out of water.’
All these symbols, it will be noticed, are common ones, such as would not excite comment among pagans. However, the Dove (at first a symbol of peace) and the Ship (which represented the Church), the Lyre (a symbol of Orpheus, see below) and the Anchor of hope (see also under ‘Cross’) are not direct symbols of Christ; nor, except by way of the Eucharist, are they representations of bread, wine, or the grape. The Agnus Dei, a post-Constantinian symbol, may more conveniently be considered under the head of ‘NT types.’
In mediaeval art a trace of the Fish symbol survived—as indeed it survives to-day—in the vesica piscis, a figure which is still customarily restricted to the seals of ecclesiastical persons and corporations. The Dove, at first used as an emblem of peace, sometimes with an olive branch in its mouth (though it occurs in pictures of the Baptism of Christ in the Catacombs), was the recognized symbol of the Holy Spirit in the apsidal mosaics of the 4th and 5th centuries, and thus has continued ever since: the Lamb, the Hand of God, and the Cross (see below), found in connexion with the Dove in these mosaics, also continued as common symbols in the Middle Ages, when interlaced triangles and circles further represented the Trinity.
Two emblems of immortality, the Peacock (from the fabled indestructibility of its flesh) and the Phœnix, rising from its ashes, were early used as types of Christ. The Star (Revelation 22:16) and the Sun (Malachi 4:2) were also used; the Rose and Lily (Song of Solomon 2:1) were very favourite subjects of decative art after the 13th cent., but they came to be used rather as emblems of Christ’s Mother than of our Lord Himself, and often as badges of the royal houses in England and France: the Pomegranate, split open, originally a type of Divine grace, became similarly common as a Tudor badge. In the Middle Ages, when great emphasis was laid upon the Eucharistic sacrifice, symbols of the Passion were much in vogue, in addition to the Vine and Corn, the Chalice and the Host. Hence the use of the Pelican, the great prevalence of the Agnus Dei and the Crucifix, and the constant use of the Instruments of the Passion, in addition to the almost infinite varieties of the Cross. The Instruments of the Passion, so common still in decorative art, are the Crown of Thorns, the Nails, the Coat and Dice, the Scourges, Pillar, Ladder and Sponge, the Five Wounds, Hammer, Pincers; to which are sometimes added the Sword and Staff, Lantern, Thirty Pieces and Cock, the Pierced Heart, and the Vernicle or Napkin of Veronica, and the Superscription INRI. The Passion-flower, a popular emblem at the present day, was introduced by the Jesuit missionaries from Mexico, as containing symbols of the Twelve Apostles, the Five Wounds, the Three Nails, and the Crown of Thorns.
3. Sacred Monograms.—The Alpha and Omega naturally appear early (though not in monogrammatic or interwoven form) because of Revelation 1:8; the first instance in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla, 2nd cent.—‘Modestina ΑΩ,’ which means ‘Modestina live in Christ.’ Some of the sacred monograms are really contractions; for instance, the familiar ΙΗϹ and ΧΡϹ are the first two and the last letters of ΙΗϹΟΥϹ and ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ, just as MR stands for MARTYR, or DO for DOMINO; contractions of this sort were extremely common in sepulchral inscriptions (e.g. ‘Lucretia pax tecum in DO’), but there was no fixed method; the abbreviations ΙΗ and ΧΡ alone are sometimes found, and also the initials ΙΧ, which, combined, formed the earliest or pre-Constantinian monogram (the first instance being in a 3rd cent. fresco in the Catacomb of SS. Peter and Marcellinus). None of these, however, are found by themselves, but only as abbreviations in the course of an inscription. The Constantinian monogram ⳩ (for ΧΡ) is the first to stand alone, though it does also occur in inscriptions (e.g. ‘Roges pro nobis quia scimus te in ⳩’); this monogram was considered a form of the Cross (see below); it is characteristic of the conversion of the Empire, and is rarely found subsequent to the Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410. It is often surrounded by a wreath, and often has the A and Ω on either side to mark the divinity of our Lord; in a 4th cent, lead coffin from Saida in Phœnicia, the letters of the old symbol ΙΧΘΥϹ he between the arms of the monogram. Three main variations of it appear in which the Cross is made more apparent ⳨, and , but these are later and less common.
The contraction IHC, as subsequently Latinized, into IHS, is now called the Sacred Monogram par excellence, and is as popular as it was in the Middle Ages and in the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was almost the only symbol of the kind; this was owing mainly to its being misunderstood as the initials of ‘Jesus Hominum Salvator’ (or even of ‘In Hoc Signo’); in mediaeval times the confusion may not have arisen, in spite of the ambiguity of the Greek H [Note: Law of Holiness.] in Gothic character, for the letter J [Note: Jahwist.] was often replaced by IH or HI [Note: I History of Israel.] , and ‘Ihesus’ was a common way of spelling the holy name. Meanwhile the contraction of the title XPS has been almost forgotten; its use in such an inscription as IHS XPS NIKA would seem strange to our eyes; but HIS XPS occur on a portrait of Christ in the Codex Egberti (circa (about) 1000), and are not unknown in late mediaeval art, e.g. both are found among the tiles of Malvern Abbey.
The initials of the Superscription INRI (‘Iesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum’), which now rank next to the IHS in popular estimation, do not seem to have appeared till the 13th cent., after which they became the favourite abbreviation of painters (cf. below under ‘Crucifixion’).
4. The symbol of the Cross eventually supplanted altogether that of the Fish. But in early Christian art representations of it are very rare, and at first only given in a disguised form, although the sign of the Cross was already so greatly reverenced towards the end of the 2nd cent, as to be used by Christians before almost every act of daily life,—dressing, eating, bathing, going to bed, etc.,—‘quaecumque nos conversatio exercet, frontem crucis signaculo terimus,’ etc. (Tert. de Coron. Mil. iii.). This great reserve was due partly to the natural shrinking from the portrayal of an instrument which was still in use for the most degraded form of execution, partly also to the fact that all Christian symbolism was necessarily of a hidden nature in the ages previous to the Peace of the Church. Thus the first representations of the Cross are very indirect; the cross-marks on the round Eucharistic loaves, which are found as early as the 2nd cent, (on a sarcophagus in the Catacomb of Priscilla), merely represent the folding up of the corners of the bread to make it round. The Anchor (a symbol which is rare after the 3rd cent.) often has a crossbar so marked as to be clearly symbolic; it was, in fact, according to Marucchi, a hidden form of the Cross, a symbolized hope in the Cross.
The earliest representation of the Cross by itself—the swastica or ‘fylfot’ —which is found in the Catacombs in the 3rd cent, and is not uncommon in the earliest Christian textiles—was a form so ‘dissimulated’ as to pass unnoticed among pagans who were accustomed to its use as a conventional ornament. Only one undisguised Cross occurs in the Catacombs during the ages of sepulture (i.e. before the Sack of Rome in 410), and this is the so-called Greek or equilateral Cross +, which has no special connexion with the Eastern Church; a small 4th cent, example of this Cross has been found in the nameless hypogeum near St. Callistus. There is a Cross, still dissimulated, in a 4th cent, fresco in the Catacomb of Callistus, a green tree with two branches, under which are two doves; for the rest, in the Catacombs the earliest ‘true and proper Cross,’ as Wilpert calls it, the earliest, that is, which is not a bare symbol, is in the Catacomb of Ponziano—a gemmed Latin Cross of the end of the 5th cent.; another similar example in the same place is attributed to the 6th or 7th. In a late 4th cent, mosaic in the church of St. Pudenziana, Rome, is one of the few undisguised Crosses that have been discovered of an earlier date than the 5th cent.; it stands in the midst of the half dome of the apse, and is of the so-called Latin shape (crux immissa), and gemmed; but the use of the Latin Cross did not become common till the 6th century.
The crux commissa, or Tan Cross, appears earlier; for, though a more exact representation of the actual instrument of death, it would pass unnoticed as the letter Ⲧ. Of this form Tertullian says (adr. Marc. iii. 22), ‘Ipsa est enim littera Graecorum Tan, nostra autem T, species crucis.’ The Cross was probably recognized as hidden in the pre-Constantinian form of the Monogram; and though it is still disguised in the ‘Constantinian Monogram,’ yet this symbol ⳩ was considered as a Cross in the 4th cent., and it must have been the ‘Cross’ which Constantine saw in the sky, since the Cross is always represented by this Monogram in contemporary art. In the later varieties of the Monogram, as we have seen, the Cross was more plainly introduced, e.g. ⳨.
Later ages increased the number of forms till there were about fifty, not counting subdivisions, which are duly named by the mediaeval heralds, e.g. the Cross Potent, Fleurie, Fleurettée, Patonce, Moline, Botonnée, Pommée, Urdée, Fourchée, Paternoster, Triparted, Crescented, Interlaced, etc, in addition to the familiar Maltese Cross worn by the Knights Templars and the Knights of St. John, the Cross of St. James borne by the Knights of St. Iago, the Saltire of Scotland and Ireland, etc. It may he added that the use of small Crosses carried about the person dates from the 5th cent., when also processional Crosses came into use (e.g. a Cross is carried, and candles, in a 5th cent, ivory, at Trèves): it was not till later that the processional Cross came to be taken from its staff and placed on the altar during service time; indeed, the use of an altar-Cross continued to be far from universal throughout the Middle Ages.
5. The Crucifix, which became the principal feature of mediaeval churches, is naturally of still later date than the Cross, for the motives which caused the early Church to shrink from an open representation of the latter would apply still more to the realism of the Crucifix. In addition to this, the blithe spirit of Christian art in the first four centuries was certainly against the portrayal of scenes of suffering and sorrow; representations of scenes from the Passion are very rare (see below), and pictures of death or martyrdom do not occur.
That the death upon the Cross was ‘foolishness’ to pagans as well as a stumbling-block to the Jews (1 Corinthians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 1:23), is curiously illustrated by the caricature of the Crucifixion which was scratched on the wall of the pages’ quarter at the Palatine in the latter part of the 2od cent., and was discovered in 1856; the figure on the Cross has an ass’s head, and by it stands a worshipper with the scrawled inscription ΑΑΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΣΕΒΕΤΕ ΘΕΟΝ (‘Alexamenos adores his god’). This caricature is, as a matter of fact, the only picture of a crucifixion that has been found within the first four centuries.
The earliest Christian example of any kind is on a panel of the 5th cent, doors of St. Sabina at Rome, about a century and a half after Constantine had abolished the penalty of crucifixion. The next is in a 5th cent, ivory in the British Museum. The third is in a Syrian MS of the year 586, and is the earliest dated example. But all these three belong to the category of ‘Scenes from the Gospels.’ The earliest actual Crucifix that is extant is a small amulet at Monza, which was given by Gregory the Great to Adaluwald the son of Queen Theodolind, and belongs therefore to the end of the 6th century. Early Christian literature (the reliability of which is illustrated by every fresh discovery in the realm of archaeology) is markedly silent on the subject, the first mention of a picture of the Crucifixion being in the middle of the 6th century. At the close of that century Gregory of Tours supplies the earliest mention of an actual Crucifix, when he tells us that there was one in a church at Narbonne, and that Christ appeared in a vision to rebuke this representation because of its nakedness. About the time of Charlemagne (800) the use of Crucifixes became very general, and they gradually ceased to be of the ideal type; but as this development belongs rather to the representation of Christ in ‘Scenes from the Gospels,’ the details are given below under that head.
ii. Types
1. Pagan.—Early Christian art is classical not only in its reserve about the Cross, not only in its use of the ordinary classical decorative subjects, but also in its use of certain pagan myths as symbolizing aspects of the Christian faith. It is remarkable that the moral value of the better elements of mythology should have been thus recognized at the very tombs of martyrs who had suffered at the hands of paganism. The figure of Orpheus was familiar as a funereal symbol among the ancients because of his fabled rescue of Eurydice from Hades: in the Catacombs it was adopted by the Christians as a symbol of the attractive power of the Master. There are five instances of Orpheus with his lyre in the Catacombs, the earliest being of the 2nd century.
Sometimes Orpheus is represented in his conventional Phrygian costume playing upon the lyre, while various heasts, birds, and reptiles listen to him; sometimes it is sheep that gather round, for Orpheus was a shepherd, and thus his story was interwoven with the Good Shepherd theme; sometimes the figure of Orpheus is even painted in the centre of a vault—in the place usually reserved for the Good Shepherd.
The story of Psyche was similarly used, typifying here the love of God for the soul. Ulysses and the Sirens occurs several times on Christian sarcophagi, and Hercules feeding the dragon with poppy-seed is also found. The peacock and the phœnix, symbols of immortality, and thus of Christ triumphing over death, as well as the dolphin, carrier of souls to the Isles of the Blessed, were other pagan types that continued in use among the Christians. In this connexion may also be mentioned the ancient Egyptian symbol of the so-called Nile key ,* [Note: See art. ‘Cross’ by Count Gohlet d’Alviella in Hastings’ forthcoming Diet, of Religion and Ethics.] which was used in textiles by the Christians in Egypt for several centuries after the conversion of that country.
2. OT types.—OT subjects are common in the Catacombs, and in some the principal figure is identified with Christ. This is the case with Moses striking the Rock, where Moses becomes the type of Christ and the water a type of Baptism, the point being sometimes emphasized by the conjunction of Christ drawing a fish out of the water, or in the sarcophagi by the raising of Lazarus. The Sacrifice of Isaac was also a favourite subject as typical of the Sacrifice of Christ. The story of Jonah was the most popular of all (there are 57 examples), as a type of the Resurrection which had been established by Christ Himself (Matthew 12:40). In the story of The Three Children the figure of the Son of Man is sometimes introduced. Although such OT subjects as Adam and Eve do not readily admit of the same typical treatment, yet in some 4th cent. sarcophagi Christ is introduced as the Logos standing between them. Representations of Noah appear as early as the end of the 1st cent., but the ark is a symbol both of deliverance and of Baptism (1 Peter 3:21), so that Noah represents the saved rather than the Saviour. From the 4th cent., when mosaics came into use, OT subjects were largely employed in the great apsidal decorations of the succeeding centuries; but all that need here be mentioned are the 6th cent. mosaic of St. Vitale at Ravenna, where Abel with a lamb and Melchizedek with a loaf stand as types of Christ on either side of the Christian altar,—which is draped and has on it a two-handled chalice and two loaves,—and the 7th cent. mosaic at St. Apollinare in Classe, where Abel, Melchizedek, and Abraham leading Isaac stand round a similar altar.
3. NT types.—The earliest manner of representing our Lord as a solitary figure was under the type which He Himself had given—that of the Good Shepherd. In its reserve, its tenderness, its gracious beauty, the figure of the Good Shepherd was characteristic of the first Christian art, and its subsequent disappearance was also characteristic of much.
This figure, which appears first in the Catacomb of Lucina in the early part of the 2nd cent. and became thereafter exceedingly common, was in no sense an attempt at portraiture. The Shepherd is always a typical shepherd of the Campagna, a beardless youth, bareheaded, clad in the tunic of the peasant; the tunic is generally sleeveless, with sometimes a small cape over the shoulders, while leggings complete the realism of the attire. There are two distinct classes of Good Shepherd pictures in the Catacombs:—(a) 21 represent him feeding his flock (in one case he protects it against a pig and an ass); these belong to the 3rd and 4th cents.; (b) 88 pictures represent him carrying a sheep (very rarely a kid—there is probably no foundation for the beautiful idea in M. Arnold’s famous aonnet); in these the sheep, according to Wilpert, represents the soul of the departed person. Class b begins very early, 3 examples of the end of the 1st cent. occurring in the Catacomb of St. Domitilla. In spite of the realism of the Good Shepherd pictures, there is a certain hieratic grace and dignity about the figure that marks it at once as a Christian subject, though the figure of a shepherd was common enough in pagan art (e.g. the Hermes Kriophoros bearing a ram, or the Apollo Nomios) to make it both a safe and an accessible model for Christians. The theme is varied in many ways: occasionally the Good Shepherd carries a kid, sometimes other sheep or goats stand near him; in a fresco in the Catacomb of St. Callistus he is surrounded by the Four Seasons; sometimes he sits and plays upon a syrinx; sometimes he carries a crook, and sometimes a milk-pail, a symbol of the gift of life,—indeed, the sheep and the milk-pail are occasionally represented by themselves, e.g. in the crypt of St. Lucina two sheep stand by an altar on which lie a milk-pail and a crook. Tertullian (circa (about) 200) mentions the painting of the Good Shepherd on chalices as a common custom (de Pudic. vii.). Statues were probably not introduced before the time of Constantine, but an exception was made in the case of the Good Shepherd; and the most lovely example of all is the statue of the 3rd cent. which was found in the Catacomb of St. Callistus, and now stands in the Lateran Museum. Pictures of the Good Shepherd have become popular again in our own time, but they are attempts at portraiture and very far from the idealistic type—it may almost be called a symbol—of the early ages, which represents a shepherd as Christ, and does not attempt to portray Christ as a shepherd.
The symbolism of the Good Shepherd, which had held so prominent a place in the affections of the Church, disappeared rapidly after the 4th cent., and was replaced by another NT type, very different in its meaning, the Agnus Dei, the mystic Lamb of St. John the Baptist and of St. John the Divine. Apparently it was not possible for men’s minds to keep in view the two ideas at once of Christ the Shepherd and Christ the Lamb, though this is attempted in the Catacomb of St. Domitilla (2nd cent.), where the Lamb bears the crook and milk-pail of the pastor. The earliest known instance of the identification of Christ with the Lamb is on the spandrels of the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, who died in 350: Christ is represented among the Three Children, striking water from the Rock, raising Lazarus, multiplying the Loaves, baptized by John, while another spandrel represents the giving of the Law; and in each case all the characters (with the exception of Lazarus) are represented as lambs. In the Catacomb of SS. Peter and Marcellinus there is a fresco (circa (about) 400) of the Lamb, haloed but with no Cross, standing on hillock from which four streams issue. Apocalyptic scenes were the favourite subject of the great apsidal mosaics of the 5th and 6th cents., and naturally the ‘Lamb, standing as though it had been slain,’ became more and more the favourite type of Christ. Often the Lamb was accompanied by twelve other lambs issuing from Bethlehem and Jerusalem, to represent the Apostles, as in the apse of SS. Cosmas and Damianns at Rome, a.d. 530.
There is something significant in this identification of the Lord with humanity, paralleled as it is by the earlier tendency to represent under the Fish symbol not only Christ Himself, but also the Christian convert. Established as the type was before the end of the 4th cent., it was not till the 5th that the Lamb was pictured with the nimbus and the cross. By 692 this method of representing Christ had so superseded all others, that the Council in Trullo (Quinisext) decreed ‘that henceforth Christ shall be publicly exhibited in the figure of a Man and not of a Lamb,’ in order that ‘we may be led to remember Christ’s conversation in the flesh, and His passion, and saving death, and the redemption which He wrought for the world.’ None the less, although the positive object of the decree was attained, the representation of the Agnus Dei was one of the most common symbols of the Middle Ages, in sculpture, in glass, in metal work and embroidery, and sometimes in painting, as in the culminating example of the Van Eycks’ great picture at Ghent (circa (about) 1430), where the Lamb stands wounded upon an altar, the blood flowing into a chalice, surrounded by a great company of angels and saints. Thus, this type has proved a most enduring one, is spite of the growing use of actual representations of our Lord after the Quinisext Council.
III. Portraits of Christ.
1. Scenes from the Gospels.—The earliest pictures of Christ are not attempts at portraiture, but represent His figure only as occurring in scenes from the Gospels: the figure is needed to explain the subject, but it is the figure of a man of varying type, and, as in all early Christian art, without attributes; the character is determined only by its position and by the fact that Christ, like the Apostles and generally other Scripture characters, is always represented as wearing the pallium of the philosopher (not the toga), a convention which has survived down to our own time, though realists like Tissot have begun its destruction. It was not till after the Peace of the Church that the head of Christ was distinguished by a nimbus: this custom began in the Catacombs circa (about) 340, and the nimbus was reserved for the figure of Christ till the end of the 5th cent., when it was given to the Saints as well, and the nimbus of Christ began to be distinguished by a cross within the circle. Among the earliest instances in which the figure of Christ appears are those which represent Him in the same guise as that which was so common in later ages, viz. as an infant in His Mother’s arms; but it was for a different reason, since the Mother and Child are but parts of a complete scene, such as that of the Visit of the Magi.
The earliest of all is in the Capella Greca in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla, and belongs to the beginning of the 2nd cent., where three Magi approach the Mother and Child with their offeriogs: this subject was a very common one, fifteen instances being mentioned by Wilpert in the Catacombs, and it continued so in the succeeding ages of sculpture and mosaic. In the Catacomb of St. Priscilla there is another fresco (of the first half of the 2nd cent.), representing the Virgin and Child sitting, while a figure (the prophet Isaiah) points to a star. The picture of the Virgin and Child in this well-known fresco is very beautiful, recalling in stateliness and grace as well as in design Raphael’s treatment of the subject: nothing could be more unlike the hieratic stiffness of the intervening Byzantine and Gothic types. The figure of the Child is naked in this instance, though in some it is draped; but in all, the treatment is that which we are accustomed to associate with the Renaissance. A fine 3rd cent. fresco in the same catacomb has the figure of a female orans (representing a consecrated virgin) in the midst, while a bishop on one side sits in his cathedra, accompanied by his deacon, and in the act of dedicating a virgin; he points to the figure on the other side of the picture, which is that of the Virgin Mary holding the Child Christ in her lap. There is also one instance of the Child lying alone in a manger (now much decayed) given by de Rossi. To carry the subject a step further, the important 6th cent. mosaics of St. Apollinare Nuove at Ravenna must he mentioned: along one wall of the nave a procession of male martyrs approaches Christ enthroned between angels, and along the other a procession of female martyrs approach the Virgin and Child similarly enthroned between angels; the Virgin has a plain nimbus and that of the Child contains the cross, while both figures are of the lofty hieratic type that endured for so many subsequent centuries; but it is remarkable that (while the figure of the enthroned Christ on the other wall is approached directly) the procession of female martyrs is led by the Magi, and thus the common tradition is still preserved by which the Mother and Child appear as part of this Gospel scene. This may be taken as a transitional instance, leading on to the later manner of representing the Virgin and Child, which has been the chief theme of Christian art since that age, and the occasion of so many masterpieces, from Cimabue, Giotto, Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Della Robbia, and the great company of Christian sculptors, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Murillo, and countless others down to our own time.
In the 2nd and 3rd cent. frescoes of the Catacombs the adult figure of Christ appears in many pictures of Gospel events; and it is remarkable that there is in the Catacomb of St. Pretestato a scene from the Passion which is almost as early as the first Virgin and Child,—viz. of the first half of the 2nd cent.,—and yet occurs once only: the Crowning with Thorns is the subject represented, and other scenes from the Passion may have occupied the now vacant spaces which form part of the scheme; yet no other picture of any Holy Week event occurs in the Catacombs. It is remarkable also that the subject most referred to by indirect type—the Resurrection of our Lord—is never once illustrated until the 4th cent.; while the figure of Christ raising Lazarus appears as early as the beginning of the 2nd cent., and occurs in no less than 53 extant examples. It must always be borne in mind that the Catacombs were not, as is popularly supposed, the ordinary churches or hiding-places of the Christians, but were designed and used for burials and services in connexion with the departed, and their art is entirely confined to subjects within this purpose. Thus, the Gospel events are all chosen with reference to two themes—the deliverance and blessedness of the departed, and the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, which were closely bound up with the thought of the faithful departed, as is shown by the reference to baptism in 1 Corinthians 15:29, and by the many chapels for and pictures of the Eucharist in the Catacombs. Thus, the Raising of Lazarus, the scenes of Healing, the Conversation about the Living Water with the Samaritan woman (as well as the pictures in which our Lord does not appear, such as Jonah and Daniel), all refer to deliverance from the powers of death; while the Baptism of Christ, the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, and the Miracle at Cana, are chosen for their reference to the Sacraments. There is a good deal of convention in the treatment of these subjects—e.g. Lazarus is represented as a mummy erect in a classical doorway, while Christ—youthful and beardless—touches him with a rod. The same scenes are carried on in the sculptures of the sarcophagi—Lazarus, the Miracles of Healing, of the Loaves, of Cana, the Epiphany, as well as the Good Shepherd; while in the 4th cent. sarcophagi are found the Entry into Jerusalem, and Christ before Pilate; the limited funereal cycle of subjects is widened out, and in the 5th cent. ivories and the carved doors of St. Sabina there are added Christ Preaching, the Agony in the Garden, the Betrayal, Christ bearing His Cross, Christ and St. Thomas, the Resurrection, and the Ascension.
But the number of events illustrated did not increase rapidly; even in modern times it has continued to be limited, as we are reminded by a comparison with Tissot’s illustrated Life of our Lord. The following list of the subjects from the life of Christ which are illustrated in ancient and mediaeval art is given by Detzel; those which occur in the Catacombs we have italicized:—
Nativity, Virgin and Child, Circumcision, Presentation, Visit of Magi and Shepherds, Flight into Egypt, Christ among the Doctors;—Baptism, Temptation, Miracle at Cana, Samaritan Woman, Healing of the Palsied, of the Woman with the Issue, of the Blind, of the Man with Dropsy, Lepers, Raising of Lazarus, of the Man at Naio, of Jairus’ Daughter, Feeding of the Multitude, Casting out Devils, Stilling of the Storm, the Transfiguration;—Entry into Jerusalem, [Jesus taking leave of His Mother, by Durer], Washing the Disciples’ Feet, Last Supper, Agooy in the Garden, Betrayal, Trial, Scourging, Crowning with Thorns, Carrying the Cross, Crucifixion, Descent from Cross [‘Pietà’ pictures], Burial, [Idealizations of the Passion or ‘Misericordienbilder,’ as, e.g., in the legend of the Mass of St. Gregory], Christ in Hades; Resurrection, and the subsequent events—Christ greeting the Women, ‘Noli me tangere’—Journey to Emmaus, Christ appearing to the Apostles, Christ and St. Thomas, Draught of Fishes at the Sea of Tiberias, Ascension, [Last Judgment].
The set of fourteen pictures found in Roman Catholic churches and called the ‘Stations of the Cross,’ some of which are legendary, are of post-Reformation origin. One scene from the Gospels, the Crucifixion, must be taken separately.
The Crucifixion as a scene from the Gospels (not in isolation) first appears in the 5th cent. on the wooden doors of St. Sabina at Rome. In this earliest example the primitive feeling is shown by the fact that no actual cross appears; Christ and the two thieves stand, almost completely naked, with the elbows near the body and the hands stretched out and nailed to little blocks of wood; the Christ is bearded and with long hair, and his eyes are open; the sculptor has filled up the background with a suggestion of the walls of Jerusalem.—The second example is also of the 5th century. It occurs on an ivory box in the British Museum: the cross is shown, and the Christ is nailed to it with arms stretched out horizontally; His face is youthful and beardless, His eyes open, and His body naked but for the loin-cloth; on one side stands a reviling Jew, on the other Mary and John, while near them Judas hangs from a tree: in this sculpture the title appears REX IVD. It is on another panel of the same box that the earliest representation of Christ bearing the cross appears.—The third Crucifixion is a miniature in a Syrian book of the Gospels, now at Florence, by Rabulas, a monk of Mesopotamia, and is dated 586: the Christ is bearded, and wears a long tunic; as in the former example, the feet are separate and the arms horizontal; the two thieves, St. John and the women, and the two soldiers with the spear and sponge, are included in the picture.
The history of the development of the Crucifix may be thus summarized. Appearing first as a scene of Gospel history in the 5th cent., it continued infrequent for another century, after which, in the 6th cent., the Crucifix in isolation begins also to appear. During the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries it has the following characteristics: the Christ wears either a loin-cloth or a long tunic reaching to the ankles, there are nails in the hands and generally in the feet also, the feet are always separate, either with or without the block or ‘suppedaneum,’ the Christ is always living, He wears neither the royal crown nor the crown of thorns, the title, when there is one, consists generally of the letters ΙϹ ΧϹ, the cross is either commissa (Ⲧ) or immissa (Ϯ); certain adjuncts also appear, the sun and moon generally, the thieves often, Mary and John generally, the two soldiers sometimes, sometimes also the soldiers dicing, and sometimes Adam and Eve.
About the time of Charlemagne (800) there was a great increase in the use of the Crucifix; and in addition to the early or Ideal type, a second type, the Realistic, began to appear. The Ideal type continued till the end of the 13th cent. (e.g. in the Codex Egberti at Trèves, circa (about) 1000, where the Christ is represented with a youthful, almost girlish face, and living, though without the royal crown, which is often added at this period to emphasize the triumphant aspect of the Crucifixion). The Realistic type, in which the Christ is represented dying, as in modern crucifixes, had become in the 11th cent. a distinctive mark of the Eastern Church, and figures in the disputes which ended in the great schism of 1054: Cardinal Humbert accused the Greeks of putting a dying Christ upon their crosses, and thus setting up a kind of Antichrist; the Patriarch Michael Cerularius retorted, in the discussion at Constantinople, that the Western custom was against nature, while the East was according to nature. None the less, the Eastern type had already found its way into Italy itself through the influence of the Byzantine craftsmen who worked there, and it spread steadily throughout the West, till by the 13th cent. it was the dominant type all over Christendom. There was sometimes in the transitional period a mingling of the types, as, e.g., in the Crucifix over the gate of St. John’s Church at Gmünd, where the figure is youthful, with open eyes and in a tranquil posture, without the crown of thorns, but the wounds and blood are shown, and the arms are bent and the head drooping. The complete Realistic type is well illustrated in the altar-cross at the Klosternenburg, Vienna, a.d. 1181, where the body is collapsed, the knees bent, the arms wrung, and the head sunk. In the 13th cent. the Crown of Thorns appears, and the feet are laid one over the other, so that the figure is held by three nails instead of four. The Realistic tendency of the Middle Ages entirely ousted the earlier triumphant type, and in the 14th cent. only the dead Christ is found upon the Cross in art. The revival of painting at this period led to a further increase of Realism, and the artists who pioneered the Renaissance delighted in the display of their anatomical knowledge: none the less there is much majesty of quiet reserve in such Crucifixions as those of Angelico in the 15th or that of Luini at Lugano in the 16th century. Among the famous examples may be mentioned those of Giotto (at Padna), Mantegna, Perugino (at Florence), Antonello da Messina, Martin Schongauer, Hans Memling, Raphael, Tintoret, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyke,—the later being the more painful. The great Crucifixion by Velasquez, in the 17th cent. at Madrid, illustrates the furthest point which was reached. Westcott truly says that it ‘presents the thought of hopeless defeat. No early Christian would have dared to look upon it.’ The same type—a tortured figure hanging low from the hands—continued in the Crucifixes of the 18th cent., though the mediaeval type was revived in the 19th, and at the present day there is a tendency to revert to the earliest Ideal type which showed Christ ‘reigning from the tree.’ There can be little dispute as to the fact that the mediaeval Crucifix did tend to over emphasize one aspect of our Lord’s life, though its constant use in Lutheran churches forbids us to connect it specially with one set of opinions. There would perhaps have been less feeling on the subject among English people if the Ideal type had been used—the benedictory figure, draped and crowned, which embodies the idea but does not attempt to represent the appearance of our Lord’s death.
2. Symbolical Scenes.—As we have seen, the earliest of any representations of Christ is under the form of the Good Shepherd, and occurs before the end of the 1st cent., while close upon this come pictures of Him in His Mother’s arms, and a picture of His Baptism and of the Crowning with Thorns in the first half of the 2nd century. Before the close of the 2nd cent. there appear representations of Him in scenes that are symbolical of Christian doctrine; and the earliest of these are in connexion with the Sacraments, while in the 3rd and 4th centuries the pictures of Him surrounded by Saints in glory begin to appear.
(a) Sacrament Pictures.—In addition to the Gospel scenes of the Feeding of the Multitude, the Miracle of Cana, and the Baptism of Christ, in the Catacombs, there are Sacrament pictures that are purely symbolical.
In the Sacrament Chapels of St. Callistus, whose decorations belong to the second half of the 2nd cent., there is a figure of our Lord, beardless and wearing the pallium as usual, stretching out His hands in the gesture of consecration over a tripod on which lie loaves and the mystic fish, while an orans, typical figure of the soul of the person buried in the tomb, stands by. Among other pictures in the same place is one supposed to represent the Seven Disciples at the Sea of Tiberias after the Resurrection; Christ is giving them bread and fish, while further along in the same picture a fisherman is represented drawing a fish out of the water, to symbolize union with Christ in baptism, and further still is Moses striking the rock: thus Baptism and the Eucharist are symbolized together. This connexion of the two Sacraments is very common, and often it is done by the juxtaposition of the Feeding of the Multitude, of which there are in the Catacombs 28 examples in all, and Moses Striking the Rock, of which there are no less than 68 examples. In the same chamber is a picture of the baptism of a catechumen, and near it the Baptism of Christ in the river, out of which a fisherman is drawing a fish. In other places the idea is abbreviated into a mere hieroglyph of loaves or loaves and fishes.
In the Middle Ages there was a very popular form of Sacrament picture, which had reference, however, to the sacrifice and not to Communion, viz. the ‘Mass of St. Gregory,’ referred to above, where Christ appears upon the altar with the attributes of His Passion, wounded, and crowned with thorns. The modern Eucharistic pictures of our Lord, which are common among both Catholics and Protestants, need only the bare mention here.
(b) Pictures of Christ in Majesty.—There are no pictures of our Lord alone, or of Him as the central dominating figure of a formal group, till the 3rd century. Up till then—from as early a period as the end of the 1st cent.—the artists, when they wished to represent Him alone (as often in the centre of a decorated vault), were content to do so under the type of the Good Shepherd. At the beginning of the 3rd cent. there appears in the Catacomb of St. Pretestato the earliest picture of Christ as a solitary figure; He sits reading the Law; the face is young and beardless, and the hair is so ample as to give almost a feminine aspect. In the same century pictures occur of our Lord sitting in judgment surrounded by saints, as, e.g., in the Nunziatella cemetery, where the Christ, beardless as usual, but with hair falling over the forehead, holds a scroll of the Law, and in the panels round the vault are four saints alternating with four orantes. There are seven examples in the Catacombs of Christ seated in the midst of the Twelve Apostles, and one of Him with the Four Evangelists, and also nine busts, all painted in the 4th cent., i.e. the Constantinian era; besides one of Christ giving crowns to saints, which is not earlier than the beginning of the 4th century. There is a sculpture of Christ enthroned on the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus († 350); and the same subject is often beautifully carved on the ivories of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries. By the end of the 4th cent. the great mosaic pictures of Christ in glory begin, the earliest being in the church of St. Pudenziana in Rome, circa (about) 390. These became thenceforward the leading feature of the apsidal decoration of the basilicas in the 5th and 6th centuries; and they are by far the greatest and the most imposing of the early pictures of our Lord. He is represented in these mosaics as enthroned in the glory of the Apocalypse, among the angels, the Apostles, and other saints and martyrs. The last great mosaic of our Lord occurs over the central door within the nave of St. Sofia, Constantinople: in this famous picture Christ sits upon a throne, while an emperor prostrates himself at His feet, and on either side are medallions of the Virgin and St. Michael.
Pictures and statues of our Lord in Majesty are common in the Middle Ages, when other symbolical representations occur. A favourite one (which is often found in the uppermost light of stained glass windows, and in other forms of art) is the Coronation of the Virgin by our Lord, which, like the Mass of St. Gregory, is characteristic of the change that had come over Christendom at that time. There should be mentioned also, as illustrating the lowest depths of materialism in religious art, the anthropomorphic representations of the Holy Trinity, which appear as early as the 9th cent.; in some the Son bears a cross, while the Father is distinguished by a tiara, and the Holy Spirit by a dove over His head; in others there are two human figures with a dove between them; in others the Father holds a Crucifix upon which a dove descends: there are even examples of a human figure with three faces.
A new type of symbolical Portrait—the ‘Sacred Heart’—has been popular among Roman Catholics since Margaret Mary Alacoque started that cultus in 1674. As a symbol by itself the Heart is already to be found in the 16th cent.—often with the Crown of Thorns, or the Nails, and the monogram IHS. In the Sacred Heart pictures and statues which appeared after the new cultus had been started, the heart of the Saviour is, by a violent symbolism, disclosed within His breast; it is marked with a wound, surmounted by a Cross, and often surrounded by flames and the Crown of Thorns.
3. Types of Portraiture.—In the first five centuries three distinct types appear in the portraiture of Christ. They are thus classified by Detzel:
First type.—A youthful beardless figure of purely ideal character, such as is found in the usual classical subjects, thus representing the perfect and eternal humanity of our Lord. Kraus calculates that there are 104 examples of this type in the Catacombs, 97 in the sarcophagi, 14 in the mosaics, 45 in gold glasses, 50 in other arts, and 3 in MSS [Note: SS Manuscripts.] . Although the earliest representations are of this kind (indeed the 3rd and 4th cent. pictures of Christ in Majesty are as purely ideal as are the 1James , 2 nd cent. pictures of the Good Shepherd), there are instances also of the beardless Christ in the mosaics (e.g. in the Raising of Lazarus at St. Apollinare Nuova, and the Throned Christ at St. Vitale, both of the 6th cent.), in the time of Charlemagne, and as late as the 13th cent., e.g. in the golden altar at Aix-la-Chapelle, where the Christ is of youthful aspect and enthroned.
Second type.—Christ is represented bearded, in the fulness of manly strength; thus there is still the conception of an ideal humanity, immortal and unmortified, without harshness and without sorrow. Examples occur frequently in the mosaics of the 4th to 6th cents., as at St. Pudenziana, St. Maria Maggiore at Rome, St. Apollinare in Classe, and St. Vitale at Ravenna; and also in the late 7th or 8th cent. fresco of the Catacombs of St. Generosa.
Third type.—The Byzantine type, which appears thrice in the Roman mosaics of the 5th and 6th cents. (e.g. at St. Paolo fuori le Mure), and embodies the growing monastic asceticism of the time. Christ in this type appears older and more severe, with longer hair and beard, deep-set eyes and hard features. This developed into the still harder and stiffer ‘debased Byzantine’ type.
To these may be added the Modern type, in which artists innumerable have striven to embody their highest conceptions of human perfection and Divine goodness. After the long sleep of pictorial art, the revival of sculpture and painting gave us such statues as the Beau Dieu of Amiens, and all the famous pictures of such artists as Orcagna, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Perugino, Raphael, Leonardo, Luini, Michael Angelo, Titian, Dürer, Guido, Murillo, Rubens,—to mention only some typical instances,—and the many works of our own times. All have followed in the main the type which the mediaeval and Renaissance artists obtained from the legendary descriptions which are mentioned below.
iv. The Question of the Likeness of Christ.—It is obvious from what has been already stated, that no true portraits of Christ have come down to us, and that no attempt was made at reproducing His likeness in the first centuries. The earliest portraits varied much in type, and had only this in common—that they were all idealistic, representing the countenance of a man unmarred by faults or peculiarities; while, in particular, the art of the Catacombs and of the earliest sculpture, with entire disregard of historic actuality, represented the Lord under the type of a beautiful youth. The early controversy as to the appearance of Christ shows how entirely all tradition of His actual appearance was lost.
Influenced by certain OT passages (e.g. Isaiah 53), Justin Martyr had already said, in the earliest extant references to the aspect of Jesus, that He appeared ‘without beauty’ (Tryph. 14, 36, 85, 88); later, Clement of Alexandria had also argued in favour of Christ being ‘unlovely in the flesh’ (Strom. iii. 17); Tertullian went so far as to say. He was ‘not even in His aspect comely’ (circa (about) Judges 1:14). So we find that Celsus taunted the Christians for worshipping one of mean appearance, to which Origen replied (circa (about) Cels. vi. 75, 76) that Christ’s person must have had about it something noble and Divine, and quoted the Transfiguration to show that His aspect depended upon the capacity of the spectator. St. Jerome, on the other hand, appealed to Psalms 44 as a proof of Christ’s beauty; and thus there arose two schools—those who held that He was ‘fairer than the children of men,’ among whom were St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Chrysostom, and those who, in their ascetic reaction against the vices of pagan beauty-worship declared that He had ‘no form nor comeliness’ and ‘no beauty that we should desire him,’ among whom were St. Basil and St. Cyril of Alexandria.
If we turn from these disputations to the Gospels, we find, indeed, no descriptions of our Lord, but we discover on every page One whose personality had a wonderfully attractive power, and whose dignity impressed friends and foes alike. And we may conclude that the instinct of the Church as a whole was right in attributing beauty to the Son of Man, since the Incarnation was the taking on of the perfection and fulness of humanity. At the time of the controversy, those on the extreme ascetic side went so far as to make hideous pictures of the Redeemer; but the idealism of early art had an easy triumph in the end, because Christ is indeed the Ideal of humanity, and the outward form of man is ultimately the expression of the soul within.
The fact that the early portraits of Christ are purely ideal is the more remarkable, because there are strongly characterized portraits of St. Peter and St. Paul of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The representations of Christ in the Gospel scenes of the 2nd and 3rd cents are, as has been stated above, merely figures of the classical type necessary for the determination of the incident depicted, and only to be distinguished by the situation in which He is represented, and partly by the pallium in which He and the Apostles are always portrayed.
It is hardly necessary to dwell on the portrait of Himself which Christ was fabled to have sent to Abgar, king of Edessa, by the hand of Thaddaeus; or on the various legends of Veronica and her napkin. St. Peter’s at Rome claims to possess the true handkerchief of Veronica; but of this relic Bartier de Montault, who saw it in 1854, says that ‘the place of the impression exhibits only a blackish surface, not giving any evidence of human features,’ and he adds that the supposed copies of it have no iconographic value whatever (Ann. Archéol. xxiii. 232).
The emperor Alexander Severns (acc. 222) placed in his lararium the image of Christ, as well as those of Abraham and Orpheus; a sect of Gnostics also venerated images of Christ, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle; but in neither case is it claimed that actual portraits were used. Eusebius (circa (about) 325) tells us that a bronze statue of Christ stretching out His hands to a kneeling woman had stood till the time of the emperor Maximin Daia (acc. 308) at Caesarea Philippi, and that he himself had seen it at Paneas (Historia Ecclesiastica vii. 18): in his time it was regarded as a representation of Christ, erected in gratitude by the woman whom He had healed of the issue (also called Veronica). Most historians hold with Gibbon, that it was really the statue of an emperor receiving the submission of a province, and that this accounts for the inscription, ‘To the Saviour the Benefactor’; but, on the other hand, it is urged as improbable that Eusebius should have mistaken so familiar a subject, or that it should have been removed by Maximin from its public position and ultimately destroyed by Julian the Apostate (acc. 361) if a pagan character could have been proved for it. There is thus a chance that one supposed actual portrait of Christ did exist before the 4th century.
Eusebius himself, however, in his well-known letter to Constantia (Migne, Patr. Gr. xx. 1515), says plainly that images of Christ are ‘nowhere to be found in churches, and it is notorious that with us alone they are forbidden,’ and mentions that he took away from a woman two painted figures like philosophers which the owner took for representations of Paul and the Saviour, ‘not thinking it right in any case that she should exhibit them further, that we may not seem like idolaters to carry our God about in an image.’ Here both the dislike of anything like portraits of Christ and the reason for that dislike are plainly stated. However, the establishment of Christianity in the Empire rapidly caused a change of feeling, and images were soon common. With the half-pagan people this led to idolatry, and the Iconoclastic Controversy in the East (716–842) was the result: one of the earliest incidents in that long struggle was the removal by Leo the Isaurian of the statue of Christ which stood over the bronze gateway of his palace at Constantinople; in its place he set up a plain cross. The second Council of Nicaea (787) vindicated the use of images; but they were not finally restored till 842. The West was untouched by the controversy, and the use of all kinds of images went on unchecked; but in the East statues are not allowed within the churches—but only pictures—to this day. The pictures of the East have retained their rigidly conservative character; but in the West the greatest artists have striven from age to age to represent our Lord in the utmost majesty and beauty.
The type which they ultimately settled upon was doubtless influenced by the supposed descriptions of Christ’s appearance, though none of these have any historical value.
The most famous is the letter of ‘Lentulus, president of the people of Jerusalem,’ to the Roman Senate, a forgery of about the 12th century. ‘There has appeared in our times,’ writes the supposed Lentulus, ‘a man of tall stature, beautiful, with a venerable countenance, which they who look on it can both love and fear. His hair is waving and crisp, somewhat wine-coloured, and glittering as it flows down over his shoulders, with a parting in the middle, after the manner of the Nazarenes. His brow is smooth and most serene; his face is without any spot or wrinkle, and glows with a delicate flush. His nose and mouth are of faultless contour; the beard is abundant, and hazel coloured like his hair, not long but forked. His eyes are prominent, brilliant, and change their colour. In denunciation he is terrible; in admonition, calm and loving, cheerful, but with unimpaired dignity. He has never been seen to laugh, but oftentimes to weep. His hands and his limbs are beautiful to look upon. In speech he is grave, reserved, modest; and he is fair among the children of men.’ This beautiful description was doubtless influenced by earlier works of art and embodied earlier traditions, as that, for instance, of St. John Damascene, the champion of images against Leo the Isaurian (circa (about) 730) and the last of the Greek Fathers; he described our Lord as beautiful and tall, with fair and slightly curling locks, dark eyebrows which met in the middle, an oval countenance, a pale complexion, olive-tinted, and of the colour of wheat, with eyes bright like His Mother’s, a slightly stooping attitude, with a sweet and sonorous voice and a look expressive of patience nobleness, and wisdom (J. Dam. Opp. i. 340). In another place (ib. 630) he indignantly reproaches the Manichees with the view once held by earlier Fathers, that the Lord was lacking in beauty.
Thus we may safely conclude that there is no authentic portrait or description of Christ, while admitting that the type accepted for more than a thousand years is all that a Christian can desire, since it is that of a perfect humanity in which, so far as men could portray it, the fulness of God dwells bodily.
Literature.—Wilpert’s Roma Sotterranea (1903) gives for the first time accurate reproductions of the frescoes in the Catacombs, with an exhaustive study carrying on the work of de Rossi (Roma Sotterranea, 1864–1867, translation by Northcote and Brownlow). Garrucci’s Storia dell’ Arte cristiana (1873–1881) is being supplanted by the accuracy of mechanical reproductions. Also by Wilpert are Principienfragen der christlichen Archaologie (1889), Ein Cyclus christologischer Gemalde (1891), Die Gottgeweihten Jungfrauen in den ersten Jahrhunderten (1892), Fractio Panis (1896), Die Malereien der Sacraments-Kapellen (1897). The Catacombs are also described by O. Maruechi, Le Catacombe Romane (1903). See also A. Venturi, Storiu dell’ Arte Italiana (1901), an exhaustive illustrated history, in progress; H. Detzel, Christliche Ikonographie (1896); V. Schultze, Archaologie der altchristlichen Kunst (1895); F. X. Kraus, Geschichte der christlichen Kunst (1896); O. Marucchi, Eléments d’Archéologie Chrétienne (1900). Among earlier works are Rohault de Fleury, L’Évangile (1874), La Messe (1883–1889); Grimouard de Saint-Laurent, ‘Iconographie de la Croix’ in Didron’s Annales (1869). W. Lowrie’s admirable illustrated handbook on Christian Art and Archaeology gives a bibliography of special works on early painting, sculpture, ivories, mosaics, etc. Westcott, in his Epistles of St. John, Appendix iii., cites the Patristic authorities. The dictionaries by Smith-Cheetham (DCA [Note: CA Dictionary of Christian Antiquities.] , 1875–1893), Kraus (RE [Note: E Realencyklopädie.] , 1886), and Martigny (Dict. des antiquités chretiennes, 1877 and 1889) ar
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Christ in Art'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/christ-in-art.html. 1906-1918.
