Art of Late Antiquity

The Third century had been a tumultuous time for the Roman Empire, which saw tremendous political and cultural changes occur due to political strife and parts of the Empire breaking away. The Emperor Diocletian helped stabilize things to a degree toward the end of the century, but groups of people known as members of German tribes began to threaten the strength of the empire again in the Fourth Century as they fled their invaded lands and pressed against Roman borders. This eventually led to increased instability in the region and ultimately resulted in the collapse of the Western empire.

The new religion called Christianity, which was rapidly gaining favor throughout parts of the empire, also brought with it monumental changes that threatened the power structure of Rome itself as more and more Romans converted. These Christians gained power within the Roman political system until the faith was eventually recognized as an official religion of the Empire in the early 4th Century. As Christians grew more powerful, the iconography of the old pagan religion was replaced with images of the new faith. As early Christianity was a religion that rejected many of the fundamental humanistic ideals of Roman religious belief, new visual strategies emerged that separated the art of this new faith from the old.

VOCABULARY LIST
Squinch
Pendentive
Tesserae
Typology
Basilica
Martyrarium
Mausoleum
Nave
Apse
Narthex
Syncretism
Central Plan
Baptistery