The Crucifixion

Harvard Theological Review, 2010

Cultural Studies Review, 2011

Envisioning Christ on the Cross: Ireland and the early medieval West , 2013

Bulletin of the Center Papyrological Studies

This paper will cover the era extend from the first to the fourth centuries A.D. That period had witnessed the eventual transformation from Roman persecutions to the official recognition of the Christianity, particularly in the major capitals; Rome and Egypt. It is worth mentioning that most of the catacombs are found in Rome where their number nearly sixty, while the same number can be counted in Latium. In Italy, the catacombs developed especially in the south where the soil consistency is harder but at the same time more ductile for excavation, while the case in Egypt was totally different as the existence of the catacombs was very rare. It can be argued that the "catacomb art" which represent the very early features of Christian art, was completely symbolic. The artist tended to adapt Old Testament themes like Noah in the Ark, Daniel in the Lion Den, Adam Eve and Good Shepherd… in order to refer to Christ especially during the time of the persecutions until he represented him in a direct way, so the research will shed light on the most important Christ's representations.

2020

My point of departure is a tenth-century Byzantine ivory plaque of the Crucifixion housed in the medieval collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Provided that this petite icon of private devotion is viewed from a distance, we cannot escape the impression of an ubiquitous holy face emerging from the shadows of the fleshed out figures. My intention here is twofold. Primarily I wish to demonstrate that the elusive face of dead Christ on the Metropolitan Crucifixion ivory was a meaningful cryptomorph, depending for its deciphering and visuality upon the responsive gaze of the medieval viewer. Secondly and according to my understanding, this hidden portrait was meant as a mental indirect reflection and an alternative visual interpretation of the renowned acheiropoietos icon/touch-relic of Christ’s face – the Image of Edessa, better known as the Mandylion – that arrived in Constantinople in 944. Keywords Crucifixion, ivory, Macedonian renaissance, Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, cryptomorph, acheiropoietos, relic, Mandylion, visuality, gaze

2021

With the advent of Christianity’s expanding popularity, Roman emperors instituted variegated proclivities of tolerance and persecution, resulting in a lack of archaeological evidence with respect to decorated artifacts before 200 C.E. Only the funerary context of cemeteries and catacombs signifies a collection of pre-Constantinian early Christian art that survived in Rome. As a result, the first examples of Christian iconography during its earlier centuries were ornately decorated marble frieze sarcophagi. At the same time, these sarcophagi shared a stylistic language and repository of symbols with contemporary “pagan” and “Jewish” sculpture. The shared iconographic language used in these sarcophagi are indicative of a larger historiographic question of the delineation of “Jewish”, “early Christian”, and “pagan” art. What makes a particular work of art Jewish, Christian, or pagan in nature? How did early Christian sarcophagi correlate to syncretistic interpretations of iconographic motifs or figures? How did the communities of early Christian faithful come to accommodate and contend with their religious and cultural (Jewish and pagan, respectively) legacies on their sarcophagi? This paper attempts to analyze the input of other historians on the scholarship of early Christian sculpture and their funerary iconography by examining the continuity and changes in the funerary subjects of Roman marble sarcophagi and by tracing those back to the larger historiographic question of its origins and influences during Late Antiquity.

Source: Notes in Art History, 2018

The architecture in the background of the unprecedented public Crucifixion scene on the Santa Sabina doors (c. 425) is examined here in terms of three interconnected phenomena: popular Christian funerary and martyr cult in Rome’s suburban cemeteries; worship at new Roman churches (such as Santa Sabina) inside Rome’s walls; and Christian appropriation of Roman imperial iconography.