Gestaltungsprinzipien spätantiker Grabräume

The book opens up a completely new perspective on Roman catacomb painting. As key monuments of Christian Archaeology, the catacombs of Rome repeatedly have been the focus of research since their rediscovery. Nevertheless, overarching questions concerning the conceptual design of their burial sites decorated with paintings, have hardly been addressed so far. The present study fills this research gap by using a comprehensive material base to analyze which guiding principles were decisive for the painterly decoration of Christian burial chambers in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. With the help of a visual studies and reception-aesthetic approach, the arrangement and combination of motifs are systematically examined and semantic structures in the interplay of images are made visible for the first time. The study comes to the astonishing conclusion that the use of images in early Christian burial chambers was by no means arbitrary. Rather, certain regularities become apparent that can also be found in contemporary Christian burial contexts in other regions of the Roman Empire.