Understanding Early Christian Art – Understanding the Ancient World

Surveying the content and character of early Christian iconography from the third to the sixth century CE, this substantially revised and updated new edition of Understanding Early Christian Art makes the critical tools of art historians accessible to students. It opens by discussing a series of questions pertaining to the evidence itself and how scholars through the centuries have regarded this material as expressing and transmitting aspects of the developing faith and practice of early adherents of Christianity.It considers possible sources for the various motifs and the complex relationship between words and images, as well as the importance of studying visual and material culture alongside theological and liturgical texts.Rather than organising surviving examples by medium or chronology, the chapters categorise the evidence according to their general iconographic type, such as generic symbols, biblical narratives, and portraits.Each chapter takes up important questions of visual cu