SCRUTINY: *v.* CATECHUMENATE AND CATECHUMEN; INVESTIGATION.
SCULPTURE. — Properly speaking, sculpture is the art that aims to bring out the forms of figures and objects in any material, either in the round or in relief relative to a background (bas-relief, high relief, etc.). It is therefore the preeminent figurative art, and its origins are certainly among the most ancient of all the arts.
The earliest sculptors left traces of their activity in small clay figurines, which, precisely because of the pliability of the material they used, are far removed from the rigidity one is accustomed to associate with later wood sculpture, a prelude to that in stone.
The discovery of the ability to cast images in bronze opened new possibilities for the art of sculpture, also due to the particular durability of the metal, which allows for the avoidance of support points required for isolated parts (e.g., arms and legs) carved in marble.
As for technique, to create his work the sculptor begins with a clay model, from which a plaster cast is then taken; this is translated into marble by first referring to the most prominent points (key points).
After the preliminary roughing-out (now generally done by professional roughers), the artist proceeds to the definitive and personal work of finishing.
For bronze, on the other hand, the work is executed through casting, which can be solid (i.e., solid sculpture obtained by pouring metal into a hollow mold), sand casting, or lost-wax casting (similar processes that allow for hollow sculpture and thus less expense). After casting, the piece undergoes chasing and patination. A similar process to bronze sculpture is that of terracotta sculpture, which also uses molds.
I. ANCIENT CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE
The richest collection of monuments illustrating the plastic activity of the first centuries of Christianity consists of sarcophagi (*v.*).
SCULPTURE — Ivory diptych from the 6th century, from the monastery of St. Michael of Murano: healing of the blind and the possessed, Christ in majesty and the three youths in the furnace, resurrection of Lazarus and healing of the paralytic, below the whale of Jonah — Ravenna, National Museum.
Sculpture in the round was, however, much rarer, of which a few small statues of the Good Shepherd survive (the most famous being that in the Lateran Museum), the young Christ teaching in the Roman National Museum, the statue of St. Hippolytus (only partially ancient), and perhaps the marble statue of St. Peter in the Vatican Grottoes, also partly reworked. For the first three centuries, therefore, one must be cautious regarding such plastic works. Nevertheless, literary accounts attest to the existence, after the Peace of the Church, of statues both in places of worship (the Lateran Baptistery; testimonies from St. John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen) and in public squares (statue of Panesius; Good Shepherd and Daniel among the lions in Constantinople; Caesarea). It is certain that the first Christian emperors did not abandon the practice of their predecessors of having themselves portrayed even in colossal statues (Constantine, the colossus of Barletta, etc.).
Put to the service of architecture, ancient Christian sculpture could be applied both to the exterior of sacred buildings, especially if constructed of stone, and to the decoration and furnishings of the interior. While, at first, the Hellenistic motif still predominates everywhere in ornamentation, a progressive blending with local elements is later noted, particularly in Syro-Palestinian architecture, and the increasingly frequent insertion of Christian signs and symbols: crosses, monograms, symbolic plants and birds. This applies not only to door and window frames but especially to capitals.
While in the West the capital long remained material reused from earlier structures or perpetuated classical forms, predominantly of the Corinthian or Composite type, the Eastern and Byzantine capital increasingly diverged, creating new forms for the core, sometimes incorporating the pulvinus, and employing new ornamentation, at times figurative, increasingly explicitly Christian, in which the decorative and chiaroscuro tendency, often expressed in openwork, prevailed over the plastic element. The shaft of the column could be twisted or decorated with vine tendrils; it rarely received figurative ornamentation (e.g., in the cemetery basilica of Saints Nereus and Achilleus); the columns of the ciborium of St. Mark’s in Venice can no longer be considered certainly ancient.
Further interior wall decoration consisted of stucco reliefs, either decorative, figurative, or polychromed, of which remains survive in St. Lawrence in Milan, Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the Orthodox Baptistery and St. Vitalis in Ravenna, Parenzo, and elsewhere.
Precious remains of wood sculpture are found in the original parts of the doors of Santa Sabina on the Aventine, Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, St. Barbara in Old Cairo, important for their biblical scenes as well as the ornamental motifs that accompany them.
Among carved liturgical furnishings, one must first mention altars, often decorated on the front, the uprights, or the vertical faces of the mensa with symbolic motifs (Baccano, Nola, Pomposa, St-Germain in Switzerland, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence) and perhaps even with figures (Sant’Agnese fuori le mura); the very upper surface of the mensa could be decorated with reliefs.
In the ambo, relief remained mostly low and decorative in nature, although the example from Salonica to Constantinople, with the scene of the Magi, attests that richer decoration was also employed. The transennae and plutei of presbyterial enclosures, where they are not purely architectural in type derived from classical art, are adorned with the usual symbolic or allegorical ornamentation, following the well-known evolution and transformation of forms. A singular relic is the marble krater with the scene of the Epiphany in the Roman National Museum, formerly in the Kircherian Museum.
The history of ancient Christian sculpture cannot be outlined without considering ivory carvings, at least those of a certain size, even if for theoretical convenience they are usually classified under the conventional heading of minor arts. In part, they allow us to complete our view of sacred furnishings; in part, they reveal a new aspect of official sculpture, particularly