The document discusses several early Christian artworks from the 6th century, including mosaics from the Church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna and illuminated manuscripts like the Rossano Gospels. The artworks combined Christian religious imagery with motifs from classical Roman art, using symbolism and narrative images to convey biblical stories. Materials like ivory, gold, and parchment were common supports and helped reinforce the sacred nature of the images during the rise of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire.

1. Church of
Sant’Apollinare Nuovo
(Ravenna),
dedicated 504

2. Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes from
Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (Ravennna), c. 504

3. appearance of a gold background to suggest an unworldly
(sacred) realm/ formal symmetry and economy of means
(to reinforce its symbolic content)/ less emphasis on
shadowing and more emphasis on the miraculous event

4. Rebecca and Eliezer
at the well, from the
Vienna Genesis, early
sixth century;
tempera, gold, and
silver on purple
vellum

5. Constantinople in Early Christianity/ codex and rotulus/
folio/ vellum and parchment/ persistence of Classical
motifs and stylistic modes

6. Christ before
Pilate, folio 8
verso of the
Rossano Gospels,
early sixth
century, tempera
on purple vellum
Christ depicted
with a beard and a
nimbus/ use of
labeling for
narrative clarity

7. Suicide of Judas and the Crucifixion of Christ,
c. 420, ivory plaque from a casket

8. Priestess celebrating the rites of
Bacchus, right leaf of the Diptych of
the Nicomachi and the Symmachi,
c. 400, ivory
persistence of the classical form
with its emphasis on beauty/ ivory
diptych/ discontent with the
dominating Christian culture

9. St. Michael the Archangel, early
sixth century, ivory
ambiguous relationship between the
figure and its setting

10. St. Michael the Archangel, early
sixth century, ivory
ambiguous relationship between the
figure and its setting