Christian Concepts and Roman Grammar in Late Antique Art

Papers of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, 68, Roma 2021. This study is an attempt to reassess our analytical tools for understanding the figural Christian language, not considering its iconographical vocabulary but rather some apparently trivial elements, for identifying long-term phenomena whose articulations and ruptures acquire significance when seen with new eyes. Starting from a couple of mosaic portraits of the mid fourth century, the paper addresses the meaning of some features only rarely considered: the ground colour, the shape of the tondo, the two-dimensionality, and frontality of the portraits. This approach highlights some elements of continuity in the figural language between the Graeco-Roman and Christian world, but at the same time, it makes clear that besides the new images there was a new beholder. In other words, the main novelty is the ‘invention’ of the beholder: Christian art presupposed and established him in an explicit way, exhorting his response as an essential part of the artistic device.