Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

reason; and the majority of the Apostolate or Episcopate, with Peter at its head, must be followed as having the promise of Christ.

V. COMPOSITION E.-Of the Scriptures. In the middle of the principal group, E 1, is a painting, a, copied from the roof of a crypt in the Cemetery of S. Agnes. The engraving of the same will be found in vol. III. pl. cxl. of Roma Sotterranea. This painting represents Christ seated between two boxes containing rolls, the Scriptures of the two Testaments, with his hand raised, in the attitude of teaching.

On one side of him, to our left, from a sarcophagus of the fourth century found in the crypts of the Vatican, and given by Bottari (Rom. Sott. vol. 1. pl. xxvii.), we see Moses, b, receiving the written law of the Old Testament, which is held to him by a hand from a cloud over the mountain.

On the opposite side, to our right, from another sarcophagus found in the Cemetery of S. Lucina, i. e. near S. Paul's Basilica, there is Moses, c, seated, reading the Law, which is held before him by an attendant (shown to be an Israelite by the cap), in order to teach the people out of it afterwards.

In the lateral group E 2, in the centre, from another sarcophagus found at the Basilica of S. Paul, and given in Rom. Sott. vol. 1. pl. xxii. from the Vatican Cemetery, one sees, d, Christ giving the new law of the Gospel as an open roll to his two Apostles, of whom S. Peter holds a closed roll as if in place of the rod, standing on the right hand of Christ, and S. Paul on the left receives the open roll of the Gospel, to preach the Cross of Christ among the Gentiles. Christ

himself stands on a small eminence, and is represented twice over, both as a man and as a lamb, with a cross rising from his forehead, standing beside the man, while four streams of the mystical Jordan, by some identified with the four Gospels, flow from the mount. On either side there is a palm-tree, and a turret and open door, from which are issuing other lambs. The whole representation is of very frequent occurrence in the fourth century, and later, on the sarcophagi; and in the mosaics around the apses or tribunes of the early Basilicas. In these the two turrets are often amplified into two cities, and have the names Jerusalem and Bethlehem added to them-Jerusalem to hint the Church of the Circumcision; Bethlehem, where the Magi found and worshipped Christ, to symbolise the Church of the Gentiles. What is remarkable in our present sculpture is this, that S. Paul seems to be associated with the narrow door of the Jews (unless there is any accidental inaccuracy), and S. Peter with the broader door of the Gentiles; whereas usually S. Paul, as the Apostle of the Gentiles, has Bethlehem and a broad door open behind him, and S. Peter, as the Apostle of the Circumcision, has Jerusalem with a narrow door behind him; and in some cases, as in a mosaic in the baptistery and tomb of S. Constantia, adjoining the church of S. Agnes, the narrow door behind S. Peter is shut, to show that the Jews as a body would not receive the Gospel. Some have thought that Christ in E 2, d, is giving the roll to Peter, the cross in his hand signifying his death, as foretold, by crucifixion, while it is S. Paul who is on the right hand of Christ, with the wider door behind him: but on two sarcophagi the Apostle to the right of Christ has the name "Peter," or the cock, S. Paul bearing the cross on the left, as here. (See P. Garucci, Hagiogl. p. 95.)

Opposite to this sculpture in E 3 is a painting, e, from the Cemetery of SS. Nereus and Achilles. (It is taken from Rom. Sott. vol. 11. pl. lxi.) It exhibits the two Apostles seated, Christ being now no longer visible to either of them, with two boxes containing rolls of books placed on the ground between them. These indicate probably the Gospel as preached by Peter and the eleven to the circumcision, and the same Gospel separately revealed by Christ himself to Paul. They are conferring together, and S. Paul is communicating to S. Peter that Gospel which he has been preaching among the Gentiles. It is understood that Christ, who has sent them both, is invisibly with them both by his grace, and works mightily in them, both towards the circumcision, and towards the uncircumcision, by his Spirit. Nothing therefore is added to the sense, though we have added from a glass the figure of Christ in the air giving grace from his hands to the two Apostles, who appear also on the same glass. (See Garucci, Vetri, &c.) With this addition the group E 3, e, answers better to E 2, d, than it would have done if the space between the two seated Apostles had been left vacant, or if the figure of Daniel between the lions, which appears there in the original, had been retained. And there is no danger of confusion or misapprehension, as if the figure of Christ in the air belonged to the same painting with the two Apostles, since the colours alone distinguish the fresco-paintings, the gold being peculiar to glasses. The figure of Christ in the air reminds us of that attitude in which he was taken up as he was in the act of blessing them," and of his promise to be with them, in teaching and baptizing all nations, even to the end of the world.

66

Lastly, at the four corners of E 2 and E 3, the figures f, g, h, i, are the four Evangelists, beginning

These

from S. Matthew, who points up to the star. are from the facsimile of a painting in the Cemetery of Prætextatus, which has been placed in the Christian museum of the Lateran. In the original Christ is seated in the midst of the four, with a book, not a roll, open in his hands, and the open box (which should be the case for the same Scriptures) at his feet. The book, and the glory round the head of Christ, show the date of this painting to be later than the third, probably towards the end of the fourth century. Judging from the youthful appearance of the third figure among the Evangelists, one might suppose he was S. John rather than the fourth, but the order in which they are numbered is that of the original. In another representation of the same four Evangelists in an early Cemetery at Albano, each of the four figures, the upper parts of which have perished, has a round box, meant to contain the roll of his Gospel, standing on the ground at his feet.

VI. COMPOSITION F.-Of the Eucharist.

THE four parts, a, b, c, d, of the principal group, F 1, occur all together as a composition in the Cemetery of S. Callistus, and were copied thence by permission for the author; only, to suit the size of the paper, a and d have been transposed, d being in the original painting on the roof of the crypt, above a, which holds the central place on the wall below, with b adjoining it to the right of the spectator, and c to his left.

a is the Mystical Supper of the Eucharist. The seven figures seated at the table represent all the disciples of Christ. The number seven, signifying universality, re

minds us of the seven disciples to whom Christ, after his resurrection, appeared on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and invited them to dine, giving them bread and broiled fish. (John xxi.) The two fishes on the table remind us of the multiplication of the five loaves and the two fishes. (Luke xi.) The seven baskets of whole cakes of bread, not fragments, ranged below, allude to the similar miracle, recorded by S. Mark, of the multiplication of seven loaves, after which they took up seven baskets full of fragments; while the addition here of an eighth basket hints, as has been already explained, that we are not to think of the literal history of any one of the three occurrences alluded to, but of that ulterior and spiritual sense to which they all point, and in which they all unite, that is, the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist. This Mystical Supper being set forth in the midst, we see as accompaniments on either side of it :

First, in b, to our right, the sacrifice of Abraham. Abraham and his son Isaac, clad each in a single tunic, are praying with hands uplifted to God; Isaac, and the lamb to be offered instead of him, which stands near, both signifying the Lamb of God, the Son of the Father, whose sacrifice is the propitiation for sin. The faggot of the wood for the burnt-offering is also seen.

In c, to our left, there stands a small tripod table, as an altar, and upon it two cakes of bread, one larger, the other smaller. On one side of this altar is a figure half-clothed in the wuis, an abstract Melchisedec, directing his hand as if to show a purpose of consecration towards the lesser cake of bread, which is partly broken, and shows in the midst of its dark substance something white, like a fish compressed. About the larger cake of bread, towards which the hand is not directed, which is not consecrated, there is nothing re

« AnteriorContinuar »