The early Christians, living in a Hellenistic Roman culture, drew on the artistic techniques and motifs of that culture, and only introduced such changes as worship and conditions of life demanded. Not all the achievements of Greece and Rome were emulated, however: sculpture, which had so prominent a place in ancient civilization, declined and almost disappeared. The most important early Christian art forms were instead painting and mosaic.
Now the origins of
veneration of images is quite unclear. Eusebius, writing in the 4th century, speaks about portraits of Jesus, Peter and Paul being made during their lifetimes and venerated by their contemporaries (
Church History 7.18).
Since I have mentioned this city I do not think it proper to omit an account which is worthy of record for posterity. For they say that the woman with an issue of blood, who, as we learn from the sacred Gospel, received from our Saviour deliverance from her affliction, came from this place, and that her house is shown in the city, and that remarkable memorials of the kindness of the Saviour to her remain there. For there stands upon an elevated stone, by the gates of her house, a brazen image of a woman kneeling, with her hands stretched out, as if she were praying. Opposite this is another upright image of a man, made of the same material, clothed decently in a double cloak, and extending his hand toward the woman. At his feet, beside the statue itself, is a certain strange plant, which climbs up to the hem of the brazen cloak, and is a remedy for all kinds of diseases. They say that this statue is an image of Jesus. It has remained to our day, so that we ourselves also saw it when we were staying in the city. Nor is it strange that those of the Gentiles who, of old, were benefited by our Saviour, should have done such things, since we have learned also that the likenesses of his apostles Paul and Peter, and of Christ himself, are preserved in paintings, the ancients being accustomed, as it is likely, according to a habit of the Gentiles, to pay this kind of honor indiscriminately to those regarded by them as deliverers.
It is of course possible to dismiss this as a late anachronism, but it is equally possible that there may be a grain of truth behind this story. A negative attitude would seem to be out of place since as far as we know, portraits of Christ and the apostles were neither common nor particularly venerated in Eusebius’ time. (The cult of the veneration of images, starting with that of Christ, would only become increasingly common and widespread from the second half of the 6th century onwards.) It would be wrong to see in his text a reflection of the state of affairs that he himself knew from what he observed around him and all the more so since he himself was not too fond of images.
We are more likely to interpret correctly the passage of Eusebius if we consider it in connection with the story from the apocryphal
Acts of John (ca. mid-to-late 2nd-3rd century) about John’s newly-converted disciple Lycomedes having a portrait painted of the apostle for private veneration. It should be added that the veneration shown it took the usual forms of the time: the portrait was placed on a table covered with a cloth, it was crowned with flowers, and two candles and altar were placed before it. John, upon knowing what Lycomedes had done, gives a discourse disapproving of portraiture and forbids the veneration of portraits and of a representation of himself. In spite of this, the fact remains that Lycomedes saw nothing wrong in possessing a portrait of his spiritual father, the apostle, or even in devoting to it a certain cult of veneration.
There is also the ambiguity of John not rejecting Lycomedes’ explanation that the painting helps keep his presence and teachings constantly before him. Instead, John focuses on another point: he convinces Lycomedes to forget about his physical appearance and instead paint a picture based on his words and on the palette of virtues that Jesus painted on the human soul: the art of preaching and restoring souls replaces painting. He calls his disciple’s eagerness and attachment for art “childish and imperfect,” but it is by no means a total condemnation of painting. His strongest remark is his criticism of Lycomedes’ possession of “a dead likeness of the dead,” but it apparently does not sway Lycomedes: the icon is a powerful substitute for the real man.
The apocryphon and Eusebius are unanimous in attributing this use to the portrait and its veneration to the first generation of Christians, who were accustomed to reverence their benefactors by a cult devoted to their portraits. It is probable that the first generations of Christians, if they did possess representations of Christ, the apostles, or martyrs, saw no wrong in surrounding them with material symbols of respect in memory of the person portrayed. In doing so, they were conforming to the usages of the social milieu to which they belonged (where for example, funerary portraits and
masks were used mainly for commemorative, but also for cultic functions). More especially, it was customary at the time for the disciples of a great man, the founder of a religious sect or of a school of philosophy, to possess and also venerate his portrait. St. Irenaeus (
Adversus haereses 1.23.4), and Eusebius (Letter to Constantia) purports that the disciples of Simon Magus did so; and we learn it also for Mani (from the same text of Eusebius and from other testimony). It was probably later that clergy, fearing a tendency to idolatry, opposed the practice and forbade not only the cult of veneration but funerary portraits themselves.
