A lot of Christian art seems to resemble Roman art sometimes. That probably has something to do with the fact that all Christians were either Romans or Roman citizens or under Roman rule at the time. Romans had a fairly big empire back then. I think there are also some tendencies that relate more to Jewish or Egyptian art, but even those cultures were currently being influenced or controlled by the Roman Empire. Also, because of this, I think that Roman culture would have been more relatable than the minority religions and cultures, certainly more so than the budding Christianity’s values. Roman art was probably the only art Early Christians (and most of the world known to them) knew.
Early Christians did not seem to know exactly what they were trying to do or express. I think it is more than likely they were preoccupied with other things like staying alive and true to Christ, not so much defining a unique art style. So it is safe to say that they were easily influenced by the cultures surrounding them, especially from the dominating Roman Empire, and less so from the Jews. I would think that Christians would try to take after the Jews, but Jewish art was apparently not setting much of an example. And at the same time, there were a lot more Romans and my assumption would be a lot more Roman converts, or at least more influential converts would be Roman.
Because Romans were polytheistic, their art and stories focused on depicting the characteristics of all their gods and goddesses. That would explain why early and more orthodox Christians’ values were (or are) placed on saints and depictions of those saints as well as Christ. Greek, Roman, and eventually the Early Christian art all seem to want to depict these key characters. Page 238 of the third edition of our textbook (I do not know if they kept it for the next edition), there are Christian symbols depicting St Matthew as an angel, St Mark as a lion, St Luke as an ox, and St John as an eagle. That is definitely not something that Christians would have picked up from Judaism. Depicting a person or god as an animal is more of a polytheistic tendency, which you can see in another culture feeling the Roman Empire’s control: Egypt. Romans and Greeks do not seem to have much of a problem having their gods being animals either.
At the same time, we can see that Early Christian art used to some degree narratives. We can see in comparison to what little Jewish art we have, and also with Ancient Egyptian art, there can be a focus on narratives. When Christian art relied on narratives, we can see that they valued things beyond Roman influence. Their narratives show what morals they value and what saints and martyrs they value, as well as what their favorite stories may have been. Jonah seemed to be a favorite. His story showed how God could save and resurrect from death. Other examples are on the “Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus” from our lectures. It has several narratives showing favorite stories and the values behind them. The figures from this sarcophagus suffer some proportion issues, so we can see that reality is not that important in these depictions, something that differs greatly from a lot of Roman art. Other works supporting that idea are the Good Shepherd sculptures that stylize to some degree, which we did not see in any of the Roman works we looked at. Also, the Good Shepherd sculptures and other artworks that depicted Christ tended to use a young man or boy. When Roman art used youth to make depictions of their rulers look strong, sometimes we can see that artists were still concerned with creating works that looked natural, as we can see with “Caracalla”. But we can also see that Romans were moving away from this naturalism back toward stylizing along with those Christians, like we can see in “Commodus as Hercules” and the Basilica Nova’s statue of Constantine. All in all, though Christianity started form Judaism, they mostly grew alongside the Romans and their art shows us that.
Some Romans did convert to christianity and they did adapt the style that was used in other cultures such as the Greeks. For example in the sculpture "The Good Shepherd" it showed the Christ became a human and yet he was God. When he is carrying the sheep on his back he is holding onto a branch which shows that he like other humans had to reach out to something to steady himself while he was doing the work. He did look naturalistic in that way and the way he was clothed he looked like a Greek shepherd. So the Roman artist that was a believer did use some of the artistic styles of Greece.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that you mentioned that Christians were more preoccupied with other things like staying alive and true to Christ,and not so much trying define a unique art style. In fact I think it is safe to say that they were easily influenced by the cultures surrounding them.
ReplyDeleteYou can see that in christian art narratives did depict good morals and people of importance. What is interesting to me was that like other cultures people or gods who are important where shown in animal form in some way. Christan art didn't really do that in their art.
ReplyDeleteHi, Carrie! I agree with your assumption and statemens regarding Christians influences with art. I mean logically it does make sense that some of the Roman art would show in their art work, because the Roman empire was dominate in many culutures during that time. Also, I completely agree with what you said about the Christians having had many more concerns to deal with such as staying alive whether than trying to establish their own art work.
ReplyDelete