Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

THIRD CENTURY CE

❚Christ was crucified ca. 29, but very little Christian art or architecture survives from the first
centuries of Christianity. “Early Christian art” means the earliest art of Christian content, not the
art of Christians at the time of Jesus.

❚The Second Commandment prohibition against graven images once led scholars to think that the
Jews of the Roman Empire had no figural art, but the synagogue at Dura-Europos contains biblical
mural paintings.

❚Excavators have also uncovered the remains of a Christian community house of the mid-third
century at Dura-Europos.

❚At about the same time, sarcophagi with a mixture of Old and New Testament scenes began to
appear.

CHRISTIAN ART UNDER CONSTANTINE, 306–337

❚Constantine’s Edict of Milan of 313 granted Christianity legal status equal or superior to paganism.
The emperor was the first great patron of Christian art and built the first churches in Rome,
including Old Saint Peter’s.

❚In a Christian ceremony, Constantine dedicated Constantinople as the new capital of the Roman
Empire in 330. He was baptized on his deathbed in 337.

❚Early Christian artists produced mural and ceiling paintings in the catacombs and sarcophagi
depicting Old and New Testament stories in great numbers.

CHRISTIAN ART, 337–526

❚The emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395) proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the Roman
Empire in 380 and banned pagan worship in 391.

❚Honorius (r. 395–423) moved the capital of his Western Roman Empire to Ravenna in 404. Rome fell
to the Visigothic king Alaric in 410.

❚Mosaics became a major vehicle for the depiction of Christian themes in churches. Extensive
mosaic cycles are preserved in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in
Ravenna.

❚The first manuscripts with illustrations of the Old and New Testaments, for example, the Vienna
Genesis,date to the early sixth century. Illuminated manuscripts would become one of the major art
forms of the Middle Ages.

THE BIG PICTURE

LATE ANTIQUITY

Synagogue, Dura-Europos,

ca. 245–256

Sarcophagus with Old and

New Testament scenes, ca. 270

Catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus,

early fourth century

Vienna Genesis,

early sixth century

Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo,

Ravenna, 504