Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

894 30. the visual arts
art to develop in this period was the icon – the portable painted panel for
home and monastery and church use or the larger image for grand church
display. 22 But more elusive and more significant is the change in the spiritual
character of the art which was produced after 425. A number of works
help us to recognize what may perhaps best be described as public art for
the institutionalized church; it is in the development of church decoration
that we may want to recognize how ecclesiastical thinking and control dominated
the development of art over this period. In other words, we need to
recognize the importance of a functional Christian art (which cannot be
seen superficially as the advertising and presentation of a new religion).
Beneath the changing forms we can try to detect a new climate within
which art operated – and of course supported and expanded Christian
modes of thought. If there was a new culture in which the notion of sin
began to dominate and in which new ethical and family values emerged and
were promoted, clearly the visual art was fully implicated in the definition
and presentation of this Christian identity. While it was in this period that
Paulinus of Nola (died 431) and pope Gregory I (590–604) claimed art as
‘writing for the illiterate’, yet it is clear that the diverse functions which we
can detect in the art of this time are more than merely didactic. Indeed,
others who wrote about the art reveal a broader understanding of the
power of art, and so does the text of Gregory to bishop Serenus of
Marseilles: ‘To adore images is one thing; to teach with their help what
should be ignored is another. What scripture is to the educated, images are
to the ignorant, who see through them what they must accept; they read in
them what they cannot read in books.’ 23
ii. church and art in the fifth century
The definitive monument in this period is the church building. The role of
the pope, Sixtus III (432–40), in the decoration of Santa Maria Maggiore
was prominently signalled at the apex of the triumphal arch with his name
as ‘seal’. 24 The church was a major dedication to Mary around the time of
the Council of Ephesus (431), and whatever the precise connection was
between council and church, it is clear that the planners of the decoration
belong to a period of concentrated debate on the nature and status of the
Virgin and Incarnate Christ. The decoration participates in that debate, and
shows how statements can be made visually, which might have been more
difficult to articulate so clearly in words. The church itself was a vast
22 The key source of information about the character and types of the painted icon in this period
comes from the holdings of the monastery of St Catherine on Sinai: see Weitzmann (1976).
23 Davis-Weyer (1971) esp. 46 and Duggan (1989).
24 For the architecture and dating see Krautheimer and others (1937– ); for the mosaics, Cecchelli
(1967).
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