Page:Woman in Art.djvu/39

 CHAPTER IV

Legendary and Early Christian Art

Our knowledge of ancient types of womanhood is scant because of the lack of written records and ignorance, in those days, of art expression. Communications were oral, handed down as tradition from generation to generation. In process of years such traditions became embellished more or less. Facts were doubtless foundations for what we would call fiction, till a fact became a legend, a story for the preservation of the fact, and to unfold a lesson—the primitive method of teaching. Then, too, there were long centuries that give us no record concerning the development of the race. But man's pathway, through plans and purposes of the Eternal, has led to a hill from whence we may look forward through a glass darkly, and far back through the mists of time.

B. C. Stand here, upon this hill of Palestine,

Where once stood shepherds keeping watch by night;

Upon each fear-fraught face the starlight shone.

Its growing splendor piercing this world's dark.

In yonder manger lay the infant Christ,

A helpless miracle of God in life;

Light of the world was He, and is, and shall

Be till the end. Stand here, for in the light

That radiates from Him, the Bethlehem Babe,

We scan the ages of a bygone time

That circles the development of man.

This brings us to the epoch of, and reason for, early Christian art, for it is the foundation of all art expression through mediaeval, renaissance, and modern centuries. There are three reasons for that early art production. First, it was a dire necessity. Symbols were used by the early Christians who were hunted and persecuted at Rome to furnish fiendish pleasure for a depraved pagan populace, hunted for death in the arena, or worse, the converts to the new religion of the Christ were driven to hide in the Clochia or the Catacombs outside the city walls. To communicate their names, whereabouts, or approaching danger they formed a code of symbols. In time those figured signs elaborated into legends, till the Apostles and Evangelists appeared in pictures accompanied 27