Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/345

 x] ANTIQUE CHRISTIAN PAINTING 327 used with a new glory and unparalleled success. They became the chief mode of church decoration, and illustrate most markedly the change in the char- acter and style of Christian art and the extension of its range of subjects in the fourth and fifth centuries. Early Christian preaching frequently referred to the striking and prefigurative incidents of the Old Testament and to the prophets who foretold Christ ; also to the events of Christ's life and the miracles wrought by Him. Thus many of the most impressive incidents of the Bible became familiar. The artists whose task it was to fill the new-built churches of the fourth and fifth centuries with Christian pictures would naturally have chosen these same subjects, many of which were eminently pictorial. But doubt- less it was the Church authorities who selected them for the churches. Thus the events approved by au- thority, emphasized in preaching, familiar to the people, and described by poets,^ were painted on the church walls for the beautifying of the churches and the edification of the faithful. These scenes do not fall within narrow limits. They include the most pictorial events of the Old Testament and its Apocrypha, and also representations of Bibli- cal personages ; they reproduce the life of the Saviour in those incidents which have been familiar to all gen- 1 Pmdentias and FaalinuB of Nola have described series of these scenes as these poets saw them on the walls of basilicas ; Pruden- tins, DUtoehaean; Paulinos, Poemata, XXIV, XXV. Cf. Von Bchlosser, Quellenbuch xur Kuimtgegchichte de$ abeudlatidischen Mittelaltera ; Kraus, op. cit., I, 383-398 ; Ficker, Die Bedeuiung der altchrittlichen Dichtungen/Ur die Bildwerke.