ASINO. - Among the many animals that early Christian art admitted into its repertory, the a. must also be counted. In a fresco in the cemetery of Pretestato (Wilpert, Pitture, Roma 1903, tav. 51, 1), in which the Good Shepherd seems to defend the flock against an a. and a pig, it was regarded as wild (onager) and interpreted as a figure
of the devil or of heretics (Physiologus, 14). It does not appear, moreover, that Christian art drew upon the multiple allegories of the a. in the classical or patristic age. From the 4th cent. onward, following the apocrypha, it introduced it into the scene of the Nativity and used it, as a historical element, in the appearance of the angel to Balaam, in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and, from the 6th cent., in the flight into Egypt. In the Palatine graffito, the a. is probably a blasphemous figure of the Crucified One.