Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/360

 330 Painting what we may call a " spirituality " peculiarly their own. The Christian artists had to express their belief in the immortal soul animating even the poorest and most dis- torted human forms, and it is their spiritual significance which gives importance to these early paintings, in spite of their technical inferiority both to antique and Renais- sance works. Copies in water-colours and photographs of many of the Catacomb paintings may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. On the recognition of Christianity as the religion of the State in the time of Constantine, Christian painting, no longer condemned to a subterranean life, was called upon to decorate the vast basilicas and churches appro- priated to the new worship. At first tempera and en- caustic colours were exclusively employed by the artists, but they were soon supplanted by mosaics. The only existing Christian mosaics attributed to the fourth century are those on the ceiling of S. Constanza, near Rome, which are of a purely decorative character. In the fifth and suc- ceeding centuries attempts were made to produce important historical pictures in mosaics ; but the intractability of the material led to a general preference for the simplest sub- jects. As we advance further and further from the times of persecution, we note an ever- widening difference between the paintings of the catacombs and the church mosaics. This difference is well illustrated by the mosaics on the Triumphal Arch of the church of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, at Rome, dating from the second half of the fifth cen- tury, for in them the antique spirit which had unconsciously influenced the artist of the sepulchres is almost extinct : the old Christian symbolism is gone ; and, instead of scenes of suffering and death above which Faith rises triumphant,