Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/252

 Ill Early Christian Sculpture. if in solemn admonition. The Museum of Christian Antiquities in the Lateran contains a marble statue of St. Hippolytus, the lower half of which belongs to the earliest period of Christian art. The Museum of the Lateran also possesses a number of early Christian sarcophagi ; others exist in the crypt of St. Peter's, Rome, at Ravenna, and elsewhere. That of Junius Bassus (Fig. 94), in the vaults of St. Peter's at Rome, dating from 359 A.D., is one of the best and purest of these works. The reliefs on this sarcophagus represent the gathering in of the grape-harvest by symbolical figures, and a number of historical scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The porphyry sarcophagus of Constantia, the daughter of Constantine, and that of Helena, mother of the same emperor, may be seen in the Vatican : the latter is a work of powerful conception and brilliant execution. Sarcophagi belonging to a much later date (sixth to eighth century; are to be found in the churches of S. Appollinare in Classe, and San Vitale at Ravenna; in the Franciscan church at Spalato in Dalmatia, in the crypt of the cathedral of Ancona, and other towns. At the time of their production, the influence of Byzantine art, which discouraged the use of sculpture for sacred subjects, was widely felt, and an inclination was manifested once more to prefer symbolic to historical representations. The result of this tendency was a decline in the art of statuary ; and these later works are inferior in style and execution to those of the fourth century. After what we have said in speaking of Byzantine architecture of the great services rendered to the cause of art by Byzantine artists, it will be necessary to explain