Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/348

 330 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. in Christian art ; ' and in this new art of the victory of the Church the topics symbolized are chiefly taken from the Apocalypse. The productiveness of the fourth and fifth centuries in Christian compositions was extraordinary. Many of the subjects had never been treated. And when we consider that the greatest art owes to the art preceding it the full debt of child to parent, and that its noblest compositions borrow much from prior designs, then we shall realize how great was the work of these mosa- icists. Was the artistic source of this art Greek or Latin ; did it flow from the East or rise in the West ? Most of the extant monuments are in Italy — because there they have been preserved. In the fourth cen- tury, as previously, in dogma and the ascetic ideals of Christian living, the initiative was from the East ; the West accepted it. In art also the initiative was from the East, and was apparently Hellenic. The allegorism which was to dominate the Latin Fathers came from the Greeks, and the early symbols, like the Fish, occur- ring in the Koman catacombs. It would also appear from the few scattered remains of early Christian art in the eastern portions of the Empire, as well as from descriptions of pictures in the works of Basil, Cyril of Alexandria, and Gregory of Nyssa, that from the Hel- lenic East came the Christian compositions of the fourth and fifth centuries.^ Even in Italy the artists probably were Greeks. 1 An example of this formal and dogmatic symbolism is afforded by the mosaics of the choir of St. Vitale in Ravenna, which cele- brate the sacrifice of the Eucharist. 2 See Bayet, Richerches pour servir a I'histoire de la Peinture et de la Sculpture chr^tiennes en Orient, Part I, Chaps. I and II ;