CANANEA. — The woman from Tyre, mentioned in Mt 15:21–28 as C., and in Mk 7:24–30 as a Syrophoenician, who implored and obtained from Jesus the liberation of her daughter from the demon that tormented her, has rarely been depicted in early Christian art.
Although few female figures have been as much the subject of disagreement among interpreters, who have proposed as rivals the woman with the hemorrhage, the adulteress, Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus, the great sinner, etc., it may be considered highly probable that C. is to be recognized solely in the well-defined figure of a woman who, standing and slightly bent forward, receives on her veiled hands the right hand of the Lord to kiss it in a gesture of thanksgiving. Only the sister of Lazarus received a similar pose in a limited number of sarcophagi, where, moreover, any confusion with C. is excluded by the very scene of the Resurrection in which she appears. It therefore seems unlikely that the other female figures, kneeling with hands outstretched toward the Lord, can be identified with C., all the less so since in several cases they receive the laying on of hands from Christ.
According to known monuments, C. was never depicted in catacomb frescoes; she does appear, however, in some sculptures from the second half of the 4th century. Nor in the other branches of paleo-Christian art could C. easily be identified with the kneeling woman in the mosaic of S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna; here it must rather be a question of the woman with the hemorrhage or the great sinner.