Notes on the Dates of the Paintings in the Roman Catacombs

been publishing in the Roman Catholic Magazine called The Month an attack on the volume of my great work on the "Archaeology of Rome," which relates to the catacombs.The Pagan tombs on the sides of the great roads assist very much in the proper understanding of these subterranean tombs connected with the subterranean sandpits and sandpit roads, and my two volumes on the "Tombs" and the "Catacombs" are closely connected together.My object was an archaeological one only, and by the history of art, to ascertain the dates of the paintings in the catacombs Dr. Northcote appeals to the inscriptions as proofs that they were used as burial places in the second and third centuries, which I have never doubted.I have always said that the inscriptions are of the time of the interments, but the paintings are not.Dr. Northcote follows the example of the Roman Catholic writers in general, in assuming, as a thing that nobody thinks of doubting, the really important and doubtful question-the age of the wall paintings in the catacombs.In his popular abridgment of the great work of De Rossi on this subject the title of Roma Stciterranea is calculated to mislead and does practically mislead many persons.Nearly all the visitors to Rome expect to find the catacombs under Rome itself instead of two or three miles off.The three thick quarto volumes of De Rossi all relate to one catacomb, that of St. Calixtus, in which the bishops of Rome were buried, and which was therefore more likely to have been exclusively Christian than any of the forty (?) catacombs, and yet even in this there is a Pagan tomb at the entrance and a flight of steps from it down into the catacomb, which seems to have been an original entrance ; and in that of Prsetextatus, where also an entrance is through a Pagan tomb.There is no improbability in the same family having made a tomb and a catacomb connected with it before they became Christians.The history of art has not always been connected with religious disputes, and the history of painting has never been my study, but the question of the dates of these paintings has interested me from the first season that I was in Rome, when I used to go every Monday morning into one of the catacombs with my friend Mr. Long, who took the opposite view, as he always had faith in the Roman Catholic view on the subject.I kept my book back until I found that my views as to the dates of the paintings were confirmed by so very competent a judge as Mr. Gambier Parry, and then I cancelled all the leaves in which I had accused De Rossi of making the restorations, on information given to me originally by a Roman Catholic priest, who was a good antiquary on ecclesiastical subjects

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Painting · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Historical and Architectural Studies · History

• Coils of Sunshine”

  Open Access•John Osborne•Scientia Canadensis Canadian…•2022

  Incluir item