Animals in Christian Art - Late Antique Period

Late Antique Period

In the early days of Latin and Byzantine Christianity, as well as in the period of its full bloom in the Middle Ages, a prodigious number of representations of animals is found not only in monumental sculpture, but in illuminated manuscripts, in stained glass windows, and in tapestry as well. Three reasons may be given for this unexampled fondness for animal life.

1. First, because it affords an easy medium of expressing or symbolizing a virtue or a vice, by means of the virtue or vice usually attributed to the animal represented.
2. Secondly, because of the traditional use of animal forms as an element of decoration.
3. And, thirdly, because of that return to the direct study of nature on the part of the medieval designers, which included, in one loving investigation, man, the lower animals, and the humblest plants.

The paintings of the first period, as seen in the Catacombs, show us, usually, the lamb accompanying the Good Shepherd, a representation of the Christian soul during its earthly life. Birds, too, appear either as simple decorative elements transmitted from antique paintings, or used symbolically as in Noah's dove, symbolical of the Christian soul released by death; the peacock, with its ancient meaning of immortality, and the phoenix, the symbol of apotheosis. The symbol of perhaps the widest distribution is the Ichthys, which since the second century has represented graphically the celebrated acrostic: "Jesous Christos Theou Uios Soter", and so becomes the symbol of Christ in the Eucharist. Artistically, these various representations are somewhat crude, and show the decadence of the pagan art of the time.

After the recognition of the Church by Constantine I, the Apocalypse is the source from which are derived most of the decorative themes of Christian Art. The lamb is now the most important of these, and its meaning is either the same as before or, more frequently perhaps, it is symbolic of Christ the expiatory victim. The dove is the Holy Spirit, and the four animals that St. John saw in Heaven (Apoc., iv, v) are used as personifications of the Four Evangelists. Under the influence of Byzantine art, a great variety of fantastic animals, such as dragons, birds with human heads, winged lions, etc., entwined themselves around the decorative forms until foreign wars and the iconoclast movement brought this period of vigorous art to an end.