The Architecture and Imagery of Early Christian and Medieval Rome

Overview

What you will study

The very earliest Christian art and architecture in Rome often amounted to no more than simple signs and inscriptions, and its monuments were almost invisible to view – an ordinary house front, an underground burial chamber along one of the roads leading out of the city. Constantine’s granting of a legal personality to the Church in 313 changed that, or at least accelerated change by embracing a public monumental Christian art and architecture.

Thereafter, population collapse, external pressure, and the emergence of papal administration, reshaped the city, eventually giving rise to modes of art and architecture that from a European perspective could be seen as recognisably Roman. An important aspect of this is material, an interest in recycling architectural spolia, particularly coloured marbles, which promoted lustrousness and colour and favoured columns and mosaics as means of dramatising interiors. The Architecture and Imagery of Early Christian and Medieval Rome lecture series offered by University of Oxford will explore these topics.