/Iwircrits of were no portraits of Christ in early sculp ture; as we have seen (p. 6o), the earliest representations of the Saviour were symbolical and quite impersonal. Whether represented as the Good Shepherd or as performing miracles, he was a youthful, beardless figure with long flowing locks and refilled features. The bearded type of Christ appears in the fourth and fifth centuries, when art wished to create a more individualized figure of the Saviour. This type of quiet majestic beauty, as it was then conceived, is well described in the so-called letter of Lentulus, procurator of Judea, to the Roman Senate. In early art it is best given by the portrait in the Catacombs of St. Callixtns (fig. 2). The majestic brow, eyes full of light, speaking mouth, and long flowing hair make it a work of great interest. It even has a modern air, as if it might have been done by an Overbeck. The absence of any nimbus, or glory, and the partial absence of drapery prove its great antiquity.
To a much later period belongs the head reproduced in Figure 3, taken from a fresco of the Catacombs of St. Pontianus. This is a type with which we are familiar in the mosaics of the sixth century. The face is still mild and the hair long and flowing, but it has lost the artistic qualities (1f the earlier work. Christ here holds a book in his left hand and blesses with his right, and his head is surrounded with a cruciform nimbus.
.Valltralislic Character of Early art of the catacombs is certainly naturalistic; as far as its form is concerned it is simply a copy of nature. Then as at no subsequent period was pure decoration min gled with sacred subjects. There was no hesitation in representing the nude figure or in adopting many themes common in the classic art of the period. But this naturalism did not extend so far as that of the Renais sance, for it did not give the illusion of life.
Theological was only in the fifth century that a really theo logical art arose—an art whose outward form was related to the ideas expressed, and whose subjects were not merely symbols, but religious real ities. This change was, of course, connected with the triumph of Christian ity under Constantine and his successors, in the fourth century. \\*hen the great basilicas erected by them above ground gave scope to an innumer able army of artists, then there was created a whole cycle of religions subjects entirely unknown to the painters of the catacombs. At this time frescos were still extensively used, but the favorite branch of paint ing, and that which has been best preserved, was mosaic-work.
AlOsaics: Roman Romans had used mosaics princi pally for floors, and many are the examples of fine pavements containing pictures in colored marble cubes, sometimes of a most elaborate character.
The famous Palestrina mosaic represents a gorgeous Egyptian landscape with a busy city whose flooded streets swarm with boats, and where a gorgeous procession proceeds toward a temple, while farther on, in the trackless desert, are troops of strange monsters hunted by negroes with bows and arrows. But these compositions were seldom transferred to the walls; this was mainly to be accomplished by Christian artists.
lI the fourth century the architects who erected the great basilicas understood that mosaics were the best kind of pictorial decoration for architecture, as their sombre and deep coloring harmonized with the architectural forms and gave them greater majesty, and there soon arose a large school of mosaicists who generally used, not the cubes of marble employed for pavements, but cubes of composition and glass, by which it was possible to obtain a far greater variety of coloring. With these mosaics they adorned not only the semicircular end of the church, the apse, which was the most sacred part of the edifice, but also the wall adjoining it and the great triumphal arch placed at the transept. Some times, as at Sta. Maria Maggiore, the entire surface of the walls of the nave was covered with mosaics; sometimes, also, the interior and exterior walls of the facade, as at Santa Sabina and St. Peter, all basilicas in Rome. The grand effects thus produced have never been surpassed in religious architecture.
Schools of Afosaic and Ravenna were, and still are, the two great centres of mosaic painting. In Figure 4 (pl. 27) we see the apse and triumphal arch of St. Paul outside-the-walls, in Rome, both much damaged by the fire of 1823, especially the apse mosaic. The upper mosaic was executed under Theodosius and Galla Placidia, being finished in 440 A. D. The scene is taken from the Apocalypse, and is one often met with in mediaeval art. The half figure of Christ, set in the clouds, and from which proceed rays of light, has around it, above, the four living crea tures, or symbols of the evangelists, and below the four and twenty elders presenting their crowns; lower down are figures of St. Peter and St. Paul. The st\ le of this mosaic is very different from that of the catacombs. Less free an I artistic, it has lost all classic elements and possesses a certain It% Lantine severity, but the restorations it has undergone make it difficult to criticise its original style.