By: Talia Zajac
Connected to the great demographic rise of Christian converts, the earliest specifically Christian images began appearing in the catacombs of Rome at the beginning of the third century. These first frescoes drew so heavily from contemporary classical models that it is difficult sometimes to distinguish between “pagan” and Christian pictorial representation. Aside from stories from the Old and New Testaments, catacomb walls were decorated with vines, dolphins, birds and pastoral scenes, that is, images not noticeably different from the frescoes that decorated the villas of Pompeii . However, after Constantine ’s conversion following the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, Christian art suddenly became more overt, and the figure of Christ in particular began to become as central in pictorial depiction as He was in the new Christian faith. This gradual position of Christ in the centre of Christian painting may be attributed to the changing attitudes toward images in both secular and religious spheres. These changing attitudes can be characterized in four key modes of depicting Christ: 1) early oblique symbolic portrayals, 2) images of Christ as the Good Shepherd, and 3) as the Divine Schoolmaster, and finally, 4) after the fourth century, as the King enthroned in majesty, the now familiar image of the Pantocrator.
Before treating the issue of Christ’s likeness, a few words of caution are necessary. Firstly, the primary written sources for early Christian attitudes towards the image and therefore towards the most important of images, that of their Maker, are dominated by theologians and clerics such as Clement of Alexandria or Eusebius of Caesarea: their often intellectual and theological discussion of the place of images is not necessarily an accurate reflection of more popular views towards the same topic. Furthermore, these views are often transmitted and filtered through the eighth-century iconoclasts or iconophiles. The opinions expressed by the fourth-century bishop of Caesarea , Eusebius, are a good example: Constantine ’s sister, Constantina, wrote to him “requesting an image of Christ”. Eusebius wrote back in shock: “Which image of Christ do you want? Is it to be one…portraying his countenance truly, or is it to be the one which he assumed on our behalf when he took on the appearance of the ‘form of a slave’?” Clearly for Eusebius, it is theologically impossible and impious to request an image of God, even an Incarnate One, but for a lay person like Constantina, the request for a likeness is a natural one, and a foreshadowing of the increasing veneration of the image of Christ.
Secondly, in order to trace the development of the likeness of Christ one can only speak of general artistic trends, which does not allow one to distinguish too finely between developments in the Eastern and Western halves of the Empire. As Wolfgang Fritz Volbach notes, “the continuity of antique tradition had similar effects in both parts of the Empire, though gradually national differences began to make themselves felt”. Finally, in order to avoid framing late antique views in modern terminology as much as possible, words such as “likeness” and “image” have been favoured in this essay over more modern terms such as “portrait” and “art”.
The early Christian attitude towards image-making was ultimately grounded in Mosaic law, whose second commandment forbids pictorial representation of any kind: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” In the first century AD, Josephus records that a Jewish group preferred “to die as martyrs” rather than to admit into Jerusalem the “military standards with the effigies of the Emperor Tiberius.” However, not all Jewish groups interpreted the Mosaic prohibition against images so narrowly as to exclude all pictorial representation; there seems to have been an increasing allowance for images over time, though this could be equally attributed to assimilation with the Roman culture of the Empire. According to Andr é Grabar, i n the early third century AD, for example, the synagogue of Dura was decorated with frescoes and the synagogues of Capernaum in Galilee with reliefs.
Despite the shift towards image-making even in Judaism, early Christians shared its hesitancy over the use of images to depict the divine. Specifically, the concern that images would be confused with “pagan” idols dominates early Christian discourse. Some scholars have suggested that the absence of depictions of Christ before the third century imply that Christians were afraid of their images being misinterpreted or mocked, but the earliest writings focus instead on avoidance of idolatry. Aristrides the Philosopher writing in the early second century stated that the Greeks (and presumably also the Romans) made a “grave error” in worshiping idols, and Clement of Alexandria, nearly a hundred years later stated that, “We who are forbidden to attach ourselves to idols must not engrave the face of idols…” Even as Christianity slowly diverged from Judaism, its earliest pictorial representations of Christ were therefore symbol-based, rather than an attempt to capture the divine likeness.
For example, one of the earliest Christian symbols is that based on the Greek word for fish, ΙΧΘΥС ( ichtys), which forms the initials of the Greeks words for “Jesus Christ, son of God, Saviour.” Among other meanings, the polyvalent symbol ichtys could refer equally to the Apostles as “fishers of men” and to the feeding of the five thousand, seen as a prefiguration of the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and therefore of Christ Himself. It would seem that inscriptions of the word ichtys prefigure the actual engraving or painting of a fish, so that like “Yahweh in the Old Testament…God is not named or shown, but alluded to by letters.” But in the cultural context of the Roman Empire, where it was usual to depict deities in pictorial form, the “initials of a simple declaration of faith—Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour—became a word, the word a sign, the sign an image ….”
The early portrayal of Christ as the Good Shepherd was therefore by no means an attempt to capture the likeness of Christ, but drew on the metaphor of Christ tending His flock, which Christian exegesis drew from Psalm Twenty-Three. Much more so than the fish, however, this metaphor fit in well with classical pastoral motifs already in existence for decorative purposes. Perhaps the image of the Good Shepherd also recalled the pastoral poetry of Vergil, and in particular the so-called prophesy of Christ in the fourth book of his Eclogues, which spoke of a “new human race…descending from…heaven…[with] the birth of a child”. Pre-Constantinian Christians were thus assimilating existent classical motifs to create their own tradition of images. They seem to have consciously chosen classical images that were ambiguous enough to be ordinary decorative motifs to a secular audience, but which were imbued with a hidden scriptural meaning for Christians.
As the Christian converts increased in numbers and thus in self-confidence in the third century, the concern that visual depictions of Christ would be confused with idolatry seems to have been lessened. As “Christian art … rapidly became part of the Roman world … the Roman world was in many respects becoming more like that of the Christians.” Christians adopted Roman decorative motifs, but Roman secular art also adopted the more symbol-based “abstract” modes of representation seen in the catacombs, moving away from naturalism. As Nees notes, images were slowly acquiring a “frozen quality… [There] is little doubt that the formal language of early Christian icons reflects the heritage of late Roman imagery…abjuring naturalism in favour of conveying a higher truth…”
H.P. L’Orange emphasises the adaptation of the new Tetrarchic system and the other reforms of Diocletian as a response to the “shattering [political and economic] crisis” of the third century, a time when the “free and natural forms of the early Empire,…the variation of life under a decentralization administration, was [being] replaced by a homogeneity and a uniformity under an…increasingly more centralized hierarchy of civil officials”. In the famed porphyry statue of the Four Tetrarchs—Diocletian, Maximianus, Galerius and Constantinus I—dating from circa 300, classical realism in representation is replaced by a symbolic similarity, emphasizing the unity of the newly-created Tetrarchy. In light of the crumbling Roman Empire and the increased veneration for the figures of the Augusti and the Caesars, there was no longer any place for images that allowed for all too human individuality such as the early third-century bust of the Emperor Decius. Likewise in the fourth century, the depictions of Christ were increasingly more formalized, “frozen” unmoving figures, presented out of context from New Testament stories and in a sort of timeless abstract setting. The move towards this depiction of Christ gained particular momentum after Constantine ’s Edict of Toleration granted in March 313.
After Constantine’s conversion, Christian images—and specifically images of Christ—began to flourish from the funerary frescoes of the catacombs to the monumental scale required for the consecration of Constantinople in 330 or the grant of the Lateran palace for use of the bishop of Rome, projects which once again assimilated existent decorative motifs to new Christian uses. One new depiction that occurred in the post-Constantinian period is that of the Divine Schoolmaster, Christ teaching the Apostles, which copied the older composition of a philosopher shown together his disciples. For example, in the apse of the Chapel of San Aquilino at San Lorenzo in Milan , a young, beardless Christ, with scrolls at His feet is shown teaching in the midst of His Apostles, all wearing the magisterial toga with the broad purple stripe. On a fifth-century ivory pyxis (a small box) Christ is depicted as if lecturing, with Paul holding a scroll, ready to take down Christ’s words from dictation. The emphasis on Christ as teacher is entirely appropriate in the post-313 situation when, with Constantine ’s patronage, “the bishops [were now] on a par…with the leaders of secular society, the still almost exclusively pagan aristocracy of the Senate” and allowed to freely teach and thus increase the number of converts. Nees notes that the newly recurring image of Christ teaching the faithful could not only be a reflection of the bishop’s teaching duties “…but also [his] important judicial functions, taking what had been imperial prerogatives. For that matter, Christ is both a ruler, ‘king of kings’ and the greatest of teachers.”
Throughout the fourth century, and more so in the fifth and sixth, the majesty of Christ became an increasingly popular motif that eventually supplanted the older, simpler images of Christ. Whereas earlier images show Christ as the Good Shepherd wearing the “short tunic of a Roman farm labourer, ” the portrayals of Christ as the Divine Schoolmaster show Him in a patrician toga, and finally, by the sixth century, images of Christ have Him wearing the imperial purple. In Sant’Appollinare Nuovo in Ravenna , for example, Christ is equally depicted as a beardless youth, and as a bearded older man, but both portrayals include the imperial purple, as though it were now a seemingly indispensable element. Like in the early fifth-century image of Christ enthroned at the Church of Santa Pudenziana in Rome, Christ in majesty was more frequently depicted with a beard, as Christian artists moved away the youthful Apollo (the puer aeternus) models for Christ towards using bearded gods like Jupiter or Neptune. The “head with long beard…was a part of the repertory…[of images which] both the Christian and pagans used…as one can use the same word in different senses…” The overall impression is one of awe and power, in contrast with the more benevolent god portrayed in the images of Christ as the Good Shepherd, where He is a beardless youth.
At the same time as the motif of the Good Shepherd was abandoned in favour of images emphasizing the power and kingship of Christ, secular images that commemorated and even reinforced power were increased. In the sixth century, for example, diptychs, frequently of ivory, began to appear to commemorate the rule of consuls. Like in the figures of Christ in majesty, the “essential meaning [of the consular diptychs] is the majesty of the enthroned figure, whose centrality and frontality stop all action, forcing…the beholder…to face the imposing revelation of power.”
The increased importance of the power of images is best mirrored by the example of the emperor, however. From the time of Diocletian, the office of the emperor slowly became more overtly monarchical. Though the emperor Julian in his short reign (361-363) had tried to “revive the image of the imperial office as no more than the greatest of the civil magistracies,” he continued to use a throne, indicating the degree to which even in the mid-fourth century, monarchical ideals—unthinkable under Republican Rome—had penetrated the highest sphere of the Empire, and become compatible with the self-conception of “Romanity.”
With the theoretical concentration of the power of the state in the person of the emperor, his image also became more important. For instance, as André Grabar notes,
legal sentence could not be pronounced…in the absence of an Imperial image…the emperor was, by reason of his portrait, present in the room when the judged pronounced sentence in his name. The portrait of the emperor had a similar juridical value and was virtually obligatory on weights, stamps, coins, and later on seals…
Likewise, the image of Christ as the King of Kings dressed in the imperial purple became increasingly standard for pictorial depiction, and His image took on the same veneration as that offered to the emperor. Hans Belting notes that the image of the emperor and of Christ now “not only represented a person but also was treated like a person, being worshipped…or carried from place to place in ritual procession: in short, it served in the symbolic exchange of power.” Christ’s image had become, like that of the emperor, an official, unchanging likeness.
In the fluid world of late antiquity when great political and social changes were taking place, attempting to pin down exact influences on the changing portrayals of Christ is difficult. However, one can say that in general Christian attitudes towards images had changed from a hesitation towards depicting the divine to careful assimilation with Roman decorative motifs and the use of symbolism, to a veneration of images. Simultaneously, the symbiotic relationship with the secular Roman classical culture meant that Roman images also evolved from a naturalistic to a symbolic plane of representation in light of the crumbling political unity of the Empire. New representations emphasized power and unity in their composition, as opposed to the more supple and perhaps fragile classical aesthetic. As a result of this synthesis with secular Roman culture, images of Christ grew from the first cautious representations in image-signs such as the fish, to the use of Roman pictorial topoi such as the Good Shepherd and the Divine Schoolmaster, to finally, depictions of Christ in majesty with the conversion of Constantine and the imperial patronage of the new religion. Self-confident, powerful, bearded, mature: it was this final conception of Christ that would become the standard for Byzantine icons, which heralded the new place of Christ at the center of the emperor’s and the Empire’s identity.
WORKS CITED
Lawrence Nees, Early Medieval Art ( Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 32.
Pierre du Bourguet, Early Christian Painting, Trans. Simon Watson Taylor, (London: Contact Books, 1965), p. 35.
Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, Early Christian Art, Trans Christopher Ligota, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1962), p. 14.
Epistle to Constantina as cited in Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New York: Harper-Perennial, 1987), p. 85. The “form of a slave” is taken from Phil. 2:7. There is some debate over the authenticity of this letter; Robin Margaret Jensen, Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity ( Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 2005), p. 25.
Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries, p. 85-86.
Volbach, Early Christian Art, p. 8.
The cultural shift from creation of “images” to a theory of art and art history perhaps may be properly said to begin only with the sixteenth-century publication of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Illustrious Painters, Sculptors and Architects; Emerson H. Swift, Roman Sources of Christian Art (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1951), p. 3. Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art likewise ends at the beginning of the early modern era.
Exodus 20: 4-5 as cited in Neil Macgregor and Erika Langmuir, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art ( Great Britain : Butler & Tanner, 2000), p. 22.
Josephus, Bellum Judaicum 2.9.2-3 as cited in Jensen, Face to Face, p. 55.
Andr é Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1968), p. 24.
Christians were certainly mocked for their belief in the crucifixion as the triumph of Christ; the earliest “crucifixion” scene known is, in fact, a graffiti of a donkey-headed man on a cross, together with the words “Anexagoras worships his God”; Richard Harries, The Passion in Art (Aldershort, Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), p. 12.
Aristrides of Athens, The Apology of Aristrides the Philosopher, as cited in Stéphen Bigham, Les Chrétiens et les Images: Les Attitudes Envers l’Art dans l’Église Ancienne (Montréal, Québec: Éditions Paulines, 1992), p. 77.
Clement of Alexandria , Logos Paidagogos III.59.211 as cited in Nees, Early Medieval Art, p. 32.
The earliest Gospel, that of St. Mark, was written circa 65-67 A.D. and “with [its] strong Jewish overtones” is a testament to the transition of Christianity from a sect of Judaism to becoming its own faith; John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 13.
Matthew 4:19 as cited in Ibid, p. 33.
Macgregor and Langmuir, Seeing Salvation, p. 68. The Chi-Rho is another good example of such a symbol-image.
For example on the fourth-century funerary slab of Florentius in Rome ; Gabriele Finaldi, The Image of Christ ( Great Britain : Butler & Tanner, 2000), plate 2, pp. 14-15.
Macgregor and Langmuir, Seeing Salvation, p. 70; Vulgate, Psalm 22. Vergil, Eclogues 4.5-52, as cited in Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries, p. 35. Pelikan mentions Constantine’s Good Friday Oration to the Saints in 313 and Augustine in the fifth century as attesting to Christian exegesis of Vergil’s Eclogues; Ibid, p. 36. Another example of Christian assimilation of pastoral imagery with mystical connotations would be in the portrayal of Christ as Orpheus.
H. P. l’Orange Art Forms and Civic Life in the late Roman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 39.
Volbach, Early Christian Art, plate 25, p. 67.
L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life, plate 52 pp. 107-108.
Roger Collins, Early Medieval Europe (Houndsmills, Hampshire: Palgrave, 1999), pp. 21-24.
One example of this composition in classical pictorial depiction is the group portrait of Socrates and his disciples; Jensen, Face to Face, p. 154.
Nees, Early Medieval Art, Image #29, p. 52.
Collins, Early Medieval Europe , p. 21. It is clear that in forbidding Christians from teaching the fundamentals of Roman education—grammar and rhetoric—the Emperor Julian (the Apostate) was aware of the importance of the teaching power of bishops; Collins, Ibid, p. 38.
Nees, Early Medieval Art, p. 53.
Macgregor and Langmuir, Seeing Salvation, p. 72.
Macgregor and Langmuir argue that these two depictions of Christ—beardless and bearded—demonstrate the Arian separation of Christ’s divine and human nature; Seeing Salvation pp. 80-81. The argument fails to convince, however, for surely the Byzantines would have removed these images if they found them contrary to Chaldean Orthodoxy. There was no hesitancy in removing images depicting Theoderic and his courtiers from the church. Rather, the different portrayals perhaps highlight the artistic freedom possible in the absence of one fixed tradition of representation.
Jensen, Face to Face, Fig. 78, p. 158.
Both Apollo and Christ are in a sense light-bearers.
Andr é Grabar, Christian Iconography, pp. 34-35.
Nees, Early Medieval Art, p. 54.
Collins, Early Medieval Europe , p. 38.