Banquet, Scenes Of

BANCHETTO, SCENE di. – It cannot yet be said that convivial scenes in early Christian art have received a definitive interpretation. Iconographically, it is true, the individual groups are already delineated with considerable clarity. Despite certain secondary variations, and leaving aside representations of the b. that are purely and certainly funerary, the following can now be distinguished in the cemetery frescoes: a) the banquet of seven, exceptionally twelve, almost always all men eating fish (and bread) in the immediate vicinity of a series of baskets filled with bread, whose number varies between 7 and 12; b) the b. of three, exceptionally five, men, women, and children, in which, together with the fish on the tripod, the allegorical figures of Agape and Irene and some cupbearers appear; in sculpture, moreover: c) the b. of bread and wine served mostly to five men, among whom the central group of three is outlined; d) the b. with fish among loaves, generally served to four men and often complemented by six, eight, or ten baskets. A special position is occupied by the so-called Fractio panis in the Greek Chapel at Priscilla and by the b.-miracle of Cana in the cemetery “ad duas lauros” (v), despite their septenary number of guests, which connects them with group a. These varieties of representations gave rise to a great number of conflicting interpretations, each of which sought to recognize in them the reproduction of real scenes from earthly life, of funeral banquets, of the heavenly banquet (refrigerium), of the Agape (v.), or of the Eucharistic celebration. It now seems necessary to exclude the possibility that they are realistic representations of the Agape or of the Eucharist (here, as elsewhere, Christian art proceeds by evocative allusions), and the need is emerging to distinguish between the periods and the figurative contexts. As the solution most consonant with the spirit of this art, it may be held that they generally concern the refreshment of souls in the blessed life, with more or less explicit references to the food of immortality, also prefigured in the miraculous feeding of the multitudes in the desert.