The stylised simplicity of early Christian art is celebrated in a new show in this northern Italian city.
The exhibition, Early Christian Art Between Rome and Byzantium, shows how the first Christian artists ditched classical models for rougher-and-readier forms they thought would strike a quicker chord with believers and possible converts.
"We think the switch to stylised, almost archaic figures was a deliberate one," said curators Fabrizio Visconti and Giovanni Gentili, rejecting suggestions that 'paleo-Christian' craftsmen simply didn't have the technical ability to compete with their pagan predecessors.
"Once they got the imperial thumbs up from Constantine's 313 AD edict making Christianity a state religion they really came into their own, breaking with decadent and declining Hellenistic art," they said.
The show highlights the move to rustic models and telescoped, low-perspective arrangements by juxtaposing child-like pastoral depictions of Heaven and Eden with a heady Roman view of the Elysian Fields.
Like an equally famous polychrome marble head, this latter high point of pre-Christian naturalism comes from the Museo Nazionale Romano at Palazzo Massimo in Rome.
The show goes on to illustrate how quasi-abstract, symbolic works peppered with Christ emblems like the fish, anchor and lighthouse - as well as the Chi-Rho cryptogram - helped pave the way for the glory of Byzantine icons.
Among the works featured are an ivory pyx (Communion-wafer box) with engraved scenes from Christ's life, lent by Bologna's Museo Archeologico, and a series of rare mosaics and tapestries with Biblical scenes, from the Vatican Museums.
Florence's Bargello Museum has sent an enigmatic ivory portrait of a Byzantine empress while the Intesa San Paolo Bank has lent much of its rarely seen icon collection.
The show, which features some 90 works from 20 Italian museums, runs at Intesa San Paolo's Palazzo Leoni Montanari until November 18.
