EARLY CHRISTIAN PAINTING.
The gloomy passages of the Catacombs were the birthplace of early Christian Painting—a birthplace that, from a merely artistic stand point, was hardly conducive to ushering in a vigorous and magnif icent manhood. The first Christian artists in the second and third cen turies of our era worked in secret, with slender means and slight training; and yet we cannot help admiring their work and sympathizing with it far more than with the wall-paintings of Pompeii, the pagan city of the dead. Certain things the dying Roman art and the newly-arising Chris tian painting had in common, but these were only technical resemblances.
Calacomb describing any of the frescos it will be necessary to show how they were placed in the Roman catacombs. These subterranean burial-places of the early Christians consisted of long and winding narrow passages excavated under ground in the tufa-bed. In their walls were cut many openings (/ocrili), which after receiving the bodies were closed with a marble slab generally inscribed with the name of the deceased. Opening out of these corridors at intervals were small chapels which had a double use: they were the resting-places of the great martyrs, and also the centres of worship where, especially in times of bitterest per secution, the faithful came together to attend divine service. These chapels were naturally the most highly decorated parts of the catacombs; the vault and walls were generally frescoed, as were also the arched tombs, of which each chapel contained two or three. The painting was either fresco, so called because painted on the fresh plaster of the walls, or seem, a painting on the dry plaster. The design was commonly in two colors, a reddish brown and a bluish green.
The earliest of these catacombs were founded at the close of the first century; these were small, and reached their final enormous extent only in the second half of the third century. They were at first private bury ing-places placed under the sanction of the common Roman law; but when that protection was denied them, they came under the control of the ecclesiastical authorities and assumed great importance. A number of small cemeteries were then joined together by numerous connecting pas sages, thus forming the present large catacombs, in which it is still easy to distinguish the various epochs and the different parts. Soon after the
Peace of the Church, in the fourth century, granted by the emperor Con 87 stantine, these catacombs began to be deserted, and it became more and mote the en,tom to bury in cemeteries above ground. For this reason there are in the catacombs but few paintings later than the fourth century, and th ),e we meet with are a part of restorations due to the piety of popes of the sixth, eighth, and ninth centuries.
.omb the catacombs the ornamental decoration of many of the ceilings of the chapels is based on the same models as those followed by contemporary pagan art. Pupils in the same workshops, the painters naturally employed similar designs wherever the new religion had no share; but it is in the figured compositions that the contrast comes out most strongly, between the light and often reprehensible scenes of Pom peii and the pure and Heaven-inspired figures of early Christian painting. Unfortunately, the execution of these works was generally hasty and imperfect.
Owracie•isiics anti Classrfi earlier paintings are most classic in character, like sonic in the catacombs of Domitilla, and Prmtextatus, in Rome, and San Gennaro, in Naples, 'which contain decorative frescos in the so-called Pompeian style. Later on the technique deteriorates, but, on the other hand, the ideal side of the art grows and expands. The greatest of Christian archxologists, Commendatore de Rossi, divides these early paintings into six classes, which may be reduced to five. Though all have a symbolic character, the first are strictly Svmbo/ic ktpresen/a/ions, expressing ideas by means of artistic signs, of which there are many examples, like the dove as a symbol of the soul, the palm of martyrdom, the vessel of the Church, the sign of the cross, the anchor or hope, the fish as a symbol of Christ: the latter symbol, originating from the Greek word /NO if (fish), is formed from the initials of the words Xpfaz-bc- thou wrip (.Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Saviour). This was the favorite class of subjects, conveying as it did to the eye of the believer such beautiful lessons of faith and hope.