For a Genealogy of Christian Imagery

Abstract

The article aims to investigate the historical reasons and theological principles for the birth of Christian image in 3rd century AD, and the forms this figuration took before its canonization in the fifth century-Byzantine art. We may question whether primitive Christian iconography, appeared two centuries after the propagation of the Christian religion, could constitute not the “archaic” phase of Paleochristian art – as often assessed by those art historians who study the art of the late Antiquity – but an autonomous tradition. It should be, namely, a tradition that, aroused in the middle of the Christian orthodoxy’s definition, is able to exhibit the sense and most concealed devices of that doctrinal system.