The frescoes which cover the walls and ceilings of the
burial chapels in the catacombs are distinguished from the mural decorations employed by their pagan contemporaries (as seen at Pompeii and
elsewhere) by the absence of all that was immoral or idolatrous, and that it was only very slowly and timidly that any distinctly, religious representations were introduced. These were
at first purely symbolical, meaningless to any but a Christian eye, such as the Vine, the Good Shepherd, the
Sheep, the Fisherman, and the Fish. Even the personages of ancient mythology were pressed into the service of early Christian art, and Orpheus, taming the wild beasts with his lyre, symbolized the peaceful sway of Christ; and Ulysses, deaf to the Siren’s song, represented the Believer triumphing over the allurements of sensual pleasure.
The person of Christ appeared but rarely, and then commonly simply as the chief personage in an historical picture. The events depicted from the life of Christ are but few, and always conform rigidly to the same traditional type. The most frequent are the miracle at
Cana, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the paralytic carrying his bed, the healing
of the woman with the issue of blood, the raising of Lazarus, and the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The
Crucifixion and subjects from the Passion, are never represented. The cycle of Old Testament subjects is equally limited. The most common are the history of Jonah as a type of the Resurrection, the Fall, Noah receiving the dove with the olive branch, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Moses taking off his shoes, David with the sling, Daniel in the lions’ den, and the Three Children in the fiery furnace. The mode of representation is always conventional, the treatment of the subject no less than its choice being dictated by an authority to
which the artist was compelled to bow.
One of the most perfect examples of early Christian pictorial decoration, the
so called Dispute with the Doctors, in the catacomb of
Calixtus, the “antique style of beauty” of which is noticed by
Kugler, has thus suffered irreparable mutilation, the whole of the lower part of the picture having been destroyed by the excavation of a fresh
grave recess. The plates of De Rossi, Perret, and, indeed, all illustrations of the catacombs, exhibit frequent examples of the same destructive superstition. The illustrations taken from De Rossi’s great
work representing two of the cubicula in the cemetery of St
Calixtus, show the general arrangement of the loculi and the
character of the frescoes which ornament the walls and roof. These
paintings are simply decorative of the same style as the wall
paintings of the baths, and those of Pompeii.
Each cubiculum was usually the
burying place of some one family, all the members of which were interred in it, just as in the
chantry chapels connected with medieval churches. In them
was celebrated the funeral feast on the day of burial and on its
anniversary, as well as the Eucharist, which was the invariable
accompaniment of funerals in the primitive church.
The funeral banquet descended to the Christian church from pagan
times. St Augustine in several passages inveighs against those who thus by “gluttony and insobriety buried themselves over the buried,” and “made themselves
drunk in the chapels of the martyrs, placing their excesses to the
core of religious reverence for the dead”
Some curious frescoes representing these
funeral feasts, round in the cubicula which were the scene of them, are
reproduced by Boslo and others.
