DECORAZIONE. — The universally widespread and deeply rooted appreciation of the beautified environment and object undoubtedly constituted a common substratum shared by the Greco-Roman and Christian worlds, which was bound greatly to facilitate the acceptance of decorative art in the latter. On the Christian side, moreover, the sense of d. found a corresponding expression in the feeling of joy inherent in the awareness of living a life raised to a higher degree.
When Christianity felt the need for the poetry of colour and forms, it found in Hellenistic art an entire repertory of decorative schemes and motifs ready to hand, variegated according to the indigenous characteristics of the principal centres of dissemination and relatively easy to purify of whatever idolatrous elements it might contain. The ensemble of new symbols, figures, and scenes that the new art would succeed in creating, besides serving as an expression of the new faith, would also fulfil within itself a decorative function, intended to complement the already existing rhythmic ensembles in which architectural, geometric, or linear elements, undergoing continual evolution, are combined with the various motifs drawn from the realms of nature and fantasy. These would serve the former as a kind of border.
I. CEMETERY ART
The Roman and Neapolitan catacombs have transmitted to us the oldest examples of Christian decoration. The decorative style used there in the earliest monuments now recalls the final Pompeian style only from a distance. Through a progressive simplification, which took place during the course of the 2nd century and was perhaps also accelerated by environmental influences, the dividing elements of the decoration had by then shed their architectural characterand had been reduced to a predominantly linear network, whose more or less slender friezes and lines, commonly red, green, and brown, unfold against a deliberately maintained white background, 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 s. Gennaro in Pretestato (3rd century). Usually, following a preliminary normal and diagonal cruciform division combined with concentric circles, the lunettes are arranged around the central and most important medallion, which, like them, contains 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 selection of ancient decorative motifs: paterae and cups, vases of flowers, birds, little heads, winged spirits, etc., and also with simple strips or segments of color. On the walls broken up by arcosolia and rows of loculi, one observes a forced adaptation of the same system to the available spaces, with a visible effort to obtain some panel, at whose center a Christian scene or some graceful traditional motif is made to stand out. A chamber behind the tricchia beneath S. Sebastiano fuori le mura presents this style at the height of its development. Toward the end of the 3rd century, a transitional style spread, becoming less illusionistic and, partly owing to the multiplication of Christian scenes, making the decorative filling element increasingly rare; the whole became more severe, and fantastic motifs were created that extended across the entire width between the loculi or filled the vertical angular fields with reeds or candelabra.
Only exceptionally are chambers found in these early periods decorated with more classical reminiscences, whether through the horizontal division of the walls into dado and frieze, through the use of stucco reliefs, or through references to illusionistic architecture of the kind in use during the early years of the Empire (the Greek Chapel at Priscilla; the crypt of Amplatus at Domitilla). Also to be included are certain monuments decorated with mosaic and the vaults decorated with freer motifs, such as the vine, linear interlacings, geometric intersections, etc.
For both vaults and walls, during the course of the 4th century a style began to emerge that not only often substituted a colored, yellow or red background for the white one, but also employed a dividing element consisting of broad colored borders, not infrequently accompanied by supplementary friezes, so that the whole acquired the character of true frames, laden with references to molded framings and linked together by similar friezes in a coherent and uniform ensemble. All this was accompanied by imitations of coverings, or even of marble incrustations. A chamber in the Caelian house demonstrates that the decoration of the catacombs followed in every respect the evolution of the decoration of dwellings.
The little that the East preserves for us from this period (Dura Europos, for example) reveals the same Hellenistic influences, but perhaps with a more highly developed sense of stylization.
In sarcophagus sculpture, the simplex ornamentum found rather limited application. Apart from the use of strigils, animal or human masks, and certain vegetal, landscape, or architectural motifs already in use in profane monuments, the decoration of the Christian sarcophagus was preferably entrusted to figurative compositions. It was necessary to await the innovation of columnar sarcophagi (or sarcophagi with trees) to see the way opened for a return to decorative relief, classical in origin, which found a field of application in pediments and friezes, in capitals and bases, in the columns themselves, and even across the entire face of the sarcophagus. The old motif of vine tendrils was used with great richness. Rows of city towers, as well as the undulating band of the starry sky and the evocation of the heavenly basilica, enjoyed great success in the Theodosian period; during the same period, ornament extended over all four faces of the sarcophagus. During the 5th century, in the Ravenna sarcophagi, one observes a progressive decline of figurative composition and, with it, of the Hellenistic repertory, in the face of the Eastern use of schematically symbolic, symmetrical, and stylized compositions, in which plants, birds, and vases, besides their symbolic intentions, served more than ever decorative purposes. The same may be said, at a still later date, of the products of Aquitania, where panels and lids were covered with stylized vine tendrils and acanthus to the point of leaving scarcely any room for an isolated figure. In the Sidamara group, ornament, having become somewhat harsh, is concentrated in the architectural members.
II. MONUMENTAL D
In the period of peace, with the erection in every part of the empire of basilicas, baptisteries, and martyria, Christian decorative art not only found ample opportunity to employ the most varied systems of wall decoration (mosaic, fresco, marble facing, stucco, mosaic pavement, marble and wood sculpture), but was also able to follow its own course more freely. With a keen sense of adaptation to the proportions, dimensions, and above all the functional character of the wall spaces available, it succeeded in alternating figurative compositions (to which the principal decorative task was entrusted) with others of a more allegorical or ornamental character. No one can fail to perceive the decorative function of the great surfaces of deep blue, gold, and green in the principal compositions. Pure ornament, on the other hand, in mosaics and frescoes, is concentrated in the secondary role of friezes, borders, soffits of arches, or intercolumniations, and is limited to the animal and vegetal, geometric or fanciful motifs already mentioned. Among the latter should be recalled gemmed borders, running waves, baldachins, ribbons, interlaced circles, etc. Starry skies, monograms, and crosses complete the repertory. Remains discovered in the basilicas of Aquileia show that in certain cases the ceilings too were decorated with paintings. As for stucco, its function must have been limited to frames (more readily in concentric buildings than in those of basilical plan), to some frieze or pediment, and above all to the well-known small temples, of which the baptistery of the Orthodox at Ravenna offers a well-preserved example. Marble incrustations (opus sectile) were extensively used for wall facing (in Roma, the Lateran baptistery and S. Sabina; in Parenzo, the cathedral; in Ravenna, the baptistery of the Orthodox and S. Vitale), eventually resorting 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 is shown by the many screens, plutei, and ambos, worked in low relief or pierced openwork, with a rich selection of allegorical, geometric, vegetal, or interlaced ornaments, whose form, even under Oriental or northern influences, ultimately prepared the way for medieval abstraction.Of wood sculpture, the famous doors of S. Sabina in Roma and of S. Ambrogio in Milano have preserved for us precious examples.
For the rich resources available to decorative art in the ornamentation of pavement mosaics V. MUSAICI.
III. MINOR ARTS
Whoever reflects on the immense collection of objects for common or liturgical use belonging to what we call the “minor arts” finds opened before him an infinite world of decorative applications. From the simple terracotta lamp, to gilded or engraved glass, to gems or ornaments of gold and silver, to liturgical utensils, illuminated codices, ivory diptychs, caskets or pieces of furniture, book bindings, textiles themselves, etc., the eye is lost in the diversity of the motifs and in the ways in which they are applied. Having to renounce a detailed analysis of such a rich collection perhaps constitutes the clearest testimony to the love, even among Christians, of earthly beauty, a distant reflection of divine beauty. — Vedi tav. LXXXIV.paleocristiana e dell'alto medioevo nelle chiese d'Italia, ibid., pp. 127 ff.; G. de Jerphanion, La décoration des églises en Orient du
IVe au VIe siècle, ibid., pp. 213 ff. Luciano De Bruyne