The Roman Empire left a legacy of Classical Art even after its decline as a “pagan” civilization having adopted Christianity as its official religion in the 4th century A.D. The Medieval Period is best explained by the overwhelming power of the Church, with the Church and Catholicism influencing every major aspect of Art and its creation. Various oriental elements enriched Christian Art; however, the overpowering intolerance of the Church and the other ideologies, including Islam, which controlled artistic output, gave the art its didactic quality. This brought us the Christian Art as we know it.
As fugitives, the early Christians worshipped in secret, hiding in underground catacombs. These catacombs, where the early masses were held, therefore, bore the symbols of Christian worship which included the cross, fish, lamb, doves, grapes, and the Greek letters Alpha and Omega. Subsequently, with the regular use of these underground corridors, Christian artists decorated the walls with frescoes and mosaics of subjects surrounding the life of Christ and their own including subjects that portrayed the persecution of their like and kin. Subjects like Christ, the Holy Mother, and the saints were drawn with halos around their heads.
Subjects were rendered in unskilled craftsmanship, heavy and stocky, without consideration to bodily proportions. Through raw in the techniques of rendering and being didactic, these symbols and art works united the early Christian communities. Art was a rallying point providing these anxious communities hope and giving them an identity that somehow cushioned the wrongs heaped on them.
The liberation to worship allowed these communities to grow rapidly. Growing in numbers, they required a place of worship big enough to accommodate the number of worshippers. In such conditions, the early churches were built enough to accommodate communal worship. The Christians found the structures in the Roman basilica, a large rectangular hall covered by a garbled roof with a half-dome at the end which served as the apse of the church. This apse with the altar was usually located in the east while the opposite main portal faced the west. Both east-west portions occupied the ends of the rectangular space where ran narrow aisles. The basilica, therefore, became the model for the structures of later churches.
Paintings and sculptures decorated these early basilicas. But because of Church injunctions against ‘graven’ images and the realistic sensual styles of the ‘pagan’ Romans, visual art pieces settled for art that taught rather than delighted. Didactic reasons preceded aesthetics.
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