EARLY CHRISTIAN ART

Good
shepherd,
orants and
story of jonah
ABOUT
Painted ceiling, in a cubiculum in the catacombs of
saints peter and Marcellinus. Rome, 4th century.

The catacombs are made out of a soft rock called Tufa.

Paintings represents resurrection of Christ.

 SYMBOLIZATION
The overall design shows a large circle in the
center with a cross around it, symbolizing
Christianity. Basically showing a young Christ
and his sheep (center circle)

They show Christ as a shepherd because it was illegal

to practice Christianity. The image represents Christ
as someone who is willing to take care of his people,
as well as willing to put his life at risk for his people,
explaining idea of sacrifice and crucifixion.
 SIGNIFICANCE
The significance of the images
were very influential because it
was an adaption of imagery
existing contemporary roman
and jewish traditions. Also,
because most people could not
read, therefore it was a way to
describe something visually.
This is called graphe-siaposa,
which means describing visual
STORY OF JONAH
• Jonah (prophet) goes againt God’s command to go
to Nineveh and preach repentance (“to change
one’s mind).
• Instead he gets on a ship to tarshish. God punishes
him by sending a storm to the ship’s way and while
the people in the ship try to figure out why, Jonah
confesses and is later throem overboard.
• Jonah gets eaten by a whale and after 3 days and 3
nights of praying to god, he is vomited out and later
does what he is commanded to do
• Being swallowed by the whale represents the death
of Jonah and the praying and leaving the whales
body unharmed represents the resurrection of
Jonah.
IMAGERY
• Each semicircle depicts a part of the story
of Jonah.
• On the left- shows sailors throwing Jonah
overboard
• On the right-shows Jonah coming put of the
whale
• On the bottom-shows Jonah on land,
thinking of the miracle that had happened
to him.
• Orants- figures showing prayer gestures, of
all ages and genders.
REPRESENTATION
• Christians buried their dead in
catacombs, which shows the
significance of using this particular
scene showing the resurrection for a
specific place for the dead. Therefore
Jonah was a very popular subject to
use for funerary purposes because his
tory represented Christ resurrection.
• The fresco was preserved so well,
which explains the importance of
religion and tradition during the
period, to the people.