spirit which animated those who painted them, a feeling and spirit which unhappily have too seldom found expression in the so-called religious Art of later times. Few of them are of much worth in a purely artistic view. The paintings of the catacombs are rarely to be compared, in point of beauty, with the pictures from Pompeii,—although some of them at least were contemporary works. The artistic skill which created them is of a lower order. But their interest arises mainly from the sentiment which they imperfectly embody, and their chief value is in the light which they throw upon early Christian faith and religious doctrine. They were designed not so much for the delight of the eye and the gratification of the fancy, as for stimulating affectionate imaginations, and affording lessons, easily understood, of faith, hope, and love. They were to give consolation in sorrow, and to suggest sources of strength in trial. "The Art of the first three centuries is entirely subordinate,—restrained partly by persecution and poverty, partly by a high spirituality, which cared more about preaching than painting."
With the uncertain means afforded by the internal character of these mural pictures, or by their position in the catacombs, it is impossible to fix with definiteness the period at which the Christians began to ornament the walls of their burial-places. It was probably, however, as early as the beginning of the second century; and the greater number of the most important pictures which have thus far been discovered within the subterranean cemeteries were probably executed before Christianity had become the established religion of the empire. After that time the decline in painting, as in faith, was rapid; formality took the place of simplicity; and in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries the native fire of Art sank, till nothing was left of it but a few dying embers, which the workmen from the East, who brought in the stiff conventionalisms of Byzantine Art, were unfit and unable to rekindle.
In the pictures of the most interesting period, that is, of the second and third centuries, there is no attempt at literal portraiture or historic accuracy. They were to be understood only by those who had the key to them in their minds, and they mostly arranged themselves in four broad classes. 1st. Representations of personages or scenes from the Old Testament regarded as types of those of the New. 2d. Literal or symbolic representations of personages or scenes from the New Testament. 3d. Miscellaneous figures, chiefly those of persons in the attitude of prayer. 4th. Ornamental designs, often copied from pagan examples, and sometimes with a symbolic meaning attached to them.
It is a noteworthy and affecting circumstance, that, among the immense number of the pictures in the catacombs which may be ascribed to the first three centuries, scarcely one has been found of a painful or sad character. The sufferings of the Saviour, his passion and his death, and the martyrdoms of the saints, had not become, as in after days, the main subjects of the religious Art of Italy. On the contrary, all the early paintings are distinguished by the cheerful and trustful nature of the impressions they were intended to convey. In the midst of external depression, uncertainty of fortune and of life, often in the midst of persecution, the Roman Christians dwelt not on this world, but looked forward to the fulfilment of the promises of their Lord. Their imaginations did not need the stimulus of painted sufferings; suffering was before their eyes too often in its most vivid reality; they had learned to regard it as belonging only to earth, and to look upon it as the gateway to heaven. They did not turn for consolation to the sorrows of their Lord, but to his words of comfort, to his miracles, and to his resurrection. Of all the subjects of pictures in the catacombs, the one, perhaps, more frequently repeated than any other, and under a greater variety of forms and types, is that of the Resurrection. The figure of Jonah thrown out from the body of the whale, as the type that had been used by our
