Roman and Early Christian Art

 EARLY CHRISTIAN ART

The Church of Santa Costanza in Rome was built around 350 AD, not long after Christianity was accepted by the government as the official religion in 313.  It is a central-plan church that also functions as a mausoleum, and it is designed to commemorate the Saint Constantina, daughter of Constantine, who is buried there.  For the circular shape of the building references the Roman tradition of building circular tombs to honor the lives of the dead which they housed, and was also used later in Christian baptisteries where believers were “born again” under Christ’s covenant.  Santa Costanza bears an atrium, barrel-vaulted ambulatory, and narthex, as do rectangular basilicas, but its axis is vertical, concentrating on the dome of the church.  The church’s exterior is composed of bland bricks, but the interior is designed intentionally and symmetrically to convey a sense of holy order and is covered in dazzlingly intricate and colorful mosaics that depict various religious scenes.  A colorful mosaic above the altar in the center of the church depicts Christ as the Good Shepherd.  The mosaic blends Roman and Christian styles of art, as Christ is depicted young and beardless, and the scene references a Roman myth about a man who wished to become stronger so carried a calf on his shoulders until it grew into an adult.  Christ is surrounded by wreaths of leaves, a symbol implying fruitfulness in Roman artistic traditions, that here refers to the abundance of life Christ provides.  The dome of the church, an architectural wonder invented by the Romans, is supported by squinches, lintels supported on arches that form a drum on which religious scenes are depicted in mosaics.  The rotunda of the church rises into a circle of clerestory windows surrounding the dome that bathe the church in heavenly light, giving those who enter the church a sense of the divine.

ROMAN ART

The Pantheon is a large Roman civic structure and temple with a circular floor plan.  It was built in 126 AD by Publius Aelius Hadrianus to honor all the gods of Rome, and it also houses the bodies of many deceased royals.  It features a large portico decorated with several rows of tall, granite Corinthian columns, and was expertly designed to seem a rectangular building from the front, due to the portico that disguises the dome from that angle, allowing the viewer to marvel at the unexpected size of the dome and divine nature of the space he or she experiences once entering the structure.  For the Pantheon does not have clerestory windows, but is lighted by a single circular window, or oculus, in the center of its vaulted dome that does serve to bathe the interior of the structure in a holy light.  The materials used to construct the temple are of the utmost importance and lend to the building’s grandeur.  The building’s interior is composed of rich marble, and its door is of bronze.  The Pantheon featured sculptures of various Roman gods within, and, though no longer in place, also featured finely crafted sculptures along its external pediment that likely depicted deities cast in bronze.  Ironically, the Pantheon is used today as a Catholic church.

THE EMERGENCE OF EARLY CHRISTIAN ART FROM ROMAN TRADITIONS

Roman art was primarily used to glorify deities and rulers—whose identities, such that of as Julius Caesar who claimed to be of divine heritage, often melded—and establish images of their might.  Art throughout history has revolved around religious purposes, and Roman art and early Christian art share this basic characteristic, each using art as a means to captivate and instill wonder in the viewer that they might experience an awe of the divine.  Roman and Christian art were both also built on other artistic conventions to establish their own artistic culture.  Roman art copied and added to the awesome Classical Greek style of art.  Christian art likewise evolved while Roman art was still predominant.  Many Christian stylistic conventions were borrowed from or influenced by the styles of the day.  However, Christian art grew out of the Middle Ages, a time where many Classical techniques and principles had been forgotten, and the art at first had to be hidden lest the artists be persecuted for pursuing an illegal religion.  The first Christian artists were, thus, mostly poor and unknown, as Christianity had not yet been accepted by the masses, much unlike the skillful and renowned Roman artisans.  Since they had less money, means, and skillful personnel, the earliest Christian art was usually less grand than Roman art.  Occasionally the same people making Greek and Roman art secretly made Christian art as well, but even those who only made Christian art were raised under Roman influence, so there were many stylistic similarities between Roman and Christian art that fused Roman style with Christian ideology, as in the depiction of Christ as the Good Shepherd in the Church of Santa Costanza.  Due to early Christian persecution, the earliest Christian art was also found mostly in homes and private catacombs rather than civic and public religious buildings.  Therefore, the magnificence of the interiors of religious spaces tended to take precedence over buildings’ exteriors, much unlike Roman architectural structures, such as the Pantheon, that were often of a civic and religious nature and were elaborately sculpted with columns and reliefs within and without.  This tradition continued for a while even after Christianity became legalized, though the structures began to be used for civic purposes as well.

The Edict of Milan that established Christianity as the national religion in 313 and Constantine’s rule brought Christianity and its artistic conventions to light.  Through a process called syncretism that was underway before Christianity’s legalization, Christian art modified Roman styles of architectural structures to their own religious purposes along with other artistic traditions, until its own more individualized style emerged.  This can be seen in the expansion of apses, found in Roman basilicas, to house choirs; as well as the use of the dome, of Roman origin, in Christian churches.  Christian iconography was established, though many symbols were adapted from the Roman religion to have new Christian meanings, such as wreaths of plenty used to imply fullness in Christ rather than the material wealth of Rome and its rulers.  Christian art was not so obsessed with the perfection of the human form according to classical standards of beauty.  Its emphasis was on honoring Christ and the saints while illustrating to the masses the stories of Christianity, the new religion of the state, and what a man’s place in the universe should be in response to that set of religious beliefs.  The subject matter of the artwork reflected a change in values, from the Romans’ love of conquest and wealth, to the Christians’, the majority of whom were of the lower classes, image of Christ as the ultimate prize and belief that lives fruitful of the aspects of his good nature were the ultimate treasure.  Because Christianity is a monotheistic religion, the tradition of the divination of men in art, other than the apostles and Jesus, began to disappear.  The men honored as holy were specific people connected to Jesus, not rulers of men, though rulers were still honored in artistic form.

Mosaics and occasional paintings decorated the walls of the early churches; sculptural decorum was less common in architecture, partially because of how expensive sculptures were to create.  Still, ethereal lighting from clerestory windows used in Roman architecture and elaborate designs and symbols covering every inch of the interior spaces of churches served to create an environment for faith in which the divine and unseen materialized in the physical realms.  The development of an order of visual iconography, such as Christ with his crossed halo and lilies referencing the crucifixion, also served to make sense of complex religious beliefs that could not be fully understood through verbal communication, in a fashion similar to how the Greeks and Romans made sense of the universe through their architectural and artistic practices.  While the subject matter of Christian art was quite different from that of traditional Roman art, the influence of Roman artistic conventions in Christian forms and symbols cannot be ignored.