Christian iconography - a study of its origins

Inbunden bok. Princeton U.P. 1980. ca 300 sidor.

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Introduction

The heritage left us by Greco-Roman antiquity includes a large number of works of Christian art. These are not, it is true, the paintings and and sculp tures that come to mind when we think of clasical art, but we must not forget that the art of late antiquity was a large family, to which the first Christian art also belonged, Further, we must remember that, because of the very great number of traditions that go back to it, this first Christian art plays a significant part in the history of Christian art of all times and all peoples.

Limiting ourselves to iconography, we will attempt in the following pages to show what can be observed of the manner in which the Christian images of late antiquity were created and what role these images played alongside other forms of Christian piety. In order to conform to the method of fixing the chronological limits of antiquity that is generally followed today, the monuments that will be considered will all be works that precede the rise of Islam.

This study is not meant to be a manual of ancient Christian iconography. where one would legitimately expect to find a systematic presentation of all the known types of images. Nor is it a history of iconography which would show the modifications these images underwent in time. My intentions are both more and less ambitious. Instead of considering all the monuments or all the categories of Christian images, I will cite only characteristic examples. But, on the other hand, I would like to say more about the nature of these images, about their form, and especially about their content. Let us pose the two questions that are at the basis of this inquiry: (1) Why do Paleo-Christian images look as they do, or, in other words, how were they composed? (2) On the religious level, what purposes did these images serve at the time of their creation?

To put these fundamental questions is to initiate two kinds of investigation: on the one hand, a study of the material creation of Christian iconography during late antiquity; and, on the other, an inquiry into the functions of these images in early Christian piety.