Decoration

DECORATION. - The universally widespread and deeply rooted taste for a decorated setting and object undoubtedly constituted a substratum common to the Greco-Roman world and the Christian world, which was bound greatly to facilitate the acceptance of decorative art in the latter. The sense of decoration found, moreover, on the Christian side, a counterpart in the feeling of gladness inherent in the awareness of living a life raised to a loftier degree.

When Christianity felt the need for the poetry of color and forms, it found ready at hand in Hellenistic art a whole repertoire of decorative schemes and motifs, variegated according to the indigenous reflections of the major centers of diffusion and relatively easy to purify of any idolatrous elements it might contain. The ensemble of new symbols, figures and scenes that the new art would create for itself, besides serving as an expression of the new faith, would also fulfill in itself a decorative task, destined to integrate the already existing rhythmic ensembles in which architectural, geometric or linear elements, in continuous evolution, are combined with the various motifs drawn from the realm of nature and of fantasy. These would serve the former as a setting.

I. CEMETERIAL ART

The Roman and Neapolitan catacombs have transmitted to us the most ancient examples of Christian d. [decoration]. The decorative style used there in the most ancient monuments now recalls only from afar the latest Pompeian style. Through a progressive simplification, brought about in the course of the 2nd century and perhaps hastened also by environmental influences, the dividing elements of the d. have by now laid aside their architectural character and have been reduced to a predominantly linear network, whose friezes and lunettes, more or less slender, commonly red, green and brown, unfold on a background intentionally kept white, with great variety of combinations. It is in the vaults of cubicula and arcosolia that the painter enjoyed the greatest freedom of execution, as, for example, in the vault of the cubiculum known as that of St. Januarius in Praetextatus (3rd century). Usually, following a prior normal and diagonal cruciform division, combined with concentric circles, the lunettes are arranged around the central and more important roundel, which, like them, will contain some Christian representation; the radial or peripheral connections are entrusted, with a delicate sense of variation, to linear and vegetal elements, while the interstices are filled with a rich choice of ancient decorative motifs: paterae and cups, vases of flowers, birds, little heads, genii, etc., and also with simple bands or segments of color. On the walls jagged with arcosolia and rows of loculi, one notices a forced adaptation of the same system to the available spaces, with a visible effort to obtain some panel, in whose center a Christian scene or some graceful traditional motif stands out. A room behind the trichia under St. Sebastian outside the walls presents this style at the apogee of its development. Toward the end of the 3rd century a transitional style spreads, which becomes less illusionistic and in which, also because of the multiplication of Christian scenes, the decorative filling element becomes ever rarer, the whole becomes more severe, and fantastic motifs are created that extend across the entire width between the loculi or fill the vertical corner fields with reeds or candelabra.

Only exceptionally are rooms decorated with more classical reminiscences found in these early periods, whether with a horizontal division of the walls with socle and frieze, or with recourse to stucco reliefs, or with evocations of the illusionistic architecture such as was in use in the early times of the empire (Greek chapel at Priscilla; crypt of Ampliatus at Domitilla). Also to be counted are some monuments decorated in mosaic and vaults decorated with freer motifs, such as the vine, linear interlacements, geometric intersections, etc.

Both for vaults and for walls, in the course of the 4th century a style makes headway that not only often substitutes a colored background, yellow or red, for the white one, but has recourse to a dividing element consisting of broad bands of color, not infrequently accompanied by supplementary friezes, so that the whole acquires the value of true cornices, laden with evocations of moulded framings and reconnected to one another by similar friezes in a coherent and uniform whole. All this is accompanied by imitations of revetments, or even of marble incrustations. A room of the Celimontane house demonstrates that the d. of the catacombs followed in everything the evolution of the d. of dwellings.

The little that the East preserves for us in this period (Dura Europos, for example) allows us to glimpse the same Hellenistic influences, but perhaps with a more developed sense of stylization.

In the sculpture of sarcophagi the simplex ornamentum found a rather limited application. Apart from the use of strigils, of animal or human masks, and some motif of a vegetal, landscape or architectural order already in use in profane monuments, the d. of the Christian sarcophagus was entrusted by preference to figured compositions. One must wait for the innovation of column (or tree) sarcophagi to see the way opened to a return of decorative relief, classical in origin, which finds in the pediments and friezes, in the capitals and bases, in the columns themselves and even in the entire face of the sarcophagus a field of application. Of the old motif of vine branches a very rich use is made. The rows of city towers, as well as the undulating band of the starry sky and the evocation of the heavenly basilica, had great success in the Theodosian period; in the same period the ornament extends over the four faces of the sarcophagus. During the 5th century, in the Ravenna sarcophagi one notices a progressive regression of the figured composition and, with it, of the Hellenistic repertoire, in the face of the Oriental use of schematically symbolic, symmetrical and stylized compositions, in which plants, birds and vases, besides symbolic intentions, serve more than ever decorative purposes. The same may be said, even later, of the products of Aquitania, where panels and lids are covered with stylizations of tendrils and acanthus to the point of leaving barely room for some isolated figure. In the Sidamara group the ornament, having become somewhat bristly, concentrates in the architectural members.

II. MONUMENTAL DECORATION

In the period of peace, with the erection throughout all parts of the empire of basilicas, baptisteries and martyria, Christian decorative art not only found ample occasion to apply the most varied systems of wall ornamentation (mosaic, fresco, marble revetment, stucco, mosaic paving, marble and wooden sculpture) but also to follow its own path more freely. With a keen sense of adaptation to the proportions, the dimensions and above all the functional character of the wall surfaces available, it knew how to alternate figured compositions (to which the prevailing decorative task was entrusted) with others of a more allegorical or ornamental character. The decorative function of the large surfaces of deep blue, gold and green in the principal compositions escapes no one. Pure ornament, on the other hand, in the mosaics and frescoes, is concentrated in the secondary position of friezes, borders, sub-arches or intercolumniations and is limited to the already mentioned animal and vegetable, geometric or fanciful motifs. Among the latter should be remembered the jewelled borders, the running waves, the canopies, the ribbons, the interlaced circles, etc. The repertoire is completed by starry skies, monograms and crosses. Remains found in the basilicas of Aquileia demonstrate that in certain cases the ceilings were also decorated with paintings. As for the stuccoes, their function must have been limited to the framing (more easily in concentric buildings than in those with a basilical plan), to some frieze or pediment and above all to the well-known little temples, of which the baptistery of the Orthodox at Ravenna offers a well-preserved example. Rich use was made of marble inlays (opus sectile) for the revetment of walls (in Rome, the Lateran baptistery and S. Sabina; at Parenzo, the cathedral; at Ravenna, the baptistery of the Orthodox and S. Vitale), in which recourse was eventually had to the insertion of mother-of-pearl and precious stones. Sculpture found application not only in the architectural members of sacred buildings (capitals, friezes, bases), but also and above all in furnishings, as demonstrated by so many chancel screens, plutei and ambos, worked in low relief or pierced, with a rich choice of allegorical, geometric, vegetable or interlaced ornaments, whose form, even under Eastern or Northern influences, ends by preparing the way for medieval abstraction.

Of wooden sculpture, the famous doors of S. Sabina in Rome and of S. Ambrogio in Milan have preserved precious examples for us.

For the rich resources that decorative art had at its disposal in the ornamentation of floor mosaics v. MUSAICI.

III. MINOR ARTS

To anyone who reflects on the immense collection of objects of common or liturgical use belonging to what we call the "minor arts," an infinite world of decorative applications opens up. From the simple terracotta lamp, to gilded or engraved glass, to gems or ornaments of gold and silver, to liturgical utensils, to illuminated codices, to diptychs, caskets or furniture in ivory, to bookbindings, to textiles themselves, etc., the eye is lost in the diversity of motifs and in the ways they are applied. Having to renounce a detailed analysis of such a rich collection constitutes perhaps the clearest testimony of the love, even among Christians, of earthly beauty, a distant reflection of divine beauty. - See pl. LXXXIV.

Luciano De Bruyne