Christian Building

UNEARTHING THE CHRISTIAN BUILDING

The first Christian congregations worshipped in private houses, meeting at the homes of wealthier members on a rotating basis. By the second century A.D., there is evidence that some of these houses were donated to the congregations and converted into churches. Such a conversion took place at Dura-Europos in approximately A.D. 240.

Since Christian worship was still proscribed and subject to persecution in the second and third centuries, it was necessary for Christian places of worship to be discreet, if not completely secret. Thus the converted house-church usually, as at Dura-Europos, showed no exterior change. Worship was generally conducted in the atrium, or central courtyard of the house. 

Here the early church at Dura-Europos differs: the meeting hall used for worship and prayer was created by knocking down the wall between two adjacent rooms off the left side of the atrium. Across the atrium, on the right side, another room was transformed into a baptistery that was subsequently richly decorated with Christian paintings.

The Dura-Europos baptistery was a small room with a baptismal font at one end. Baptism was by immersion and the font, located under a columned vault, was large enough to hold a person. As mentioned above, the baptistery was decorated with a cycle of Christian paintings; a painting of Christ as the Good Shepherd, for instance (visible at right), appeared above the font. Clearly Dura-Europos’s Christian congregation, like its Jewish community, did not adhere strictly to the prohibition against images in effect during the early centuries A.D. The remaining three walls seem to have shown subjects from the New Testament: the Samaritan woman at the well, Christ walking on the water, Christ healing the paralytic, and the women visiting Christ’s tomb after the Resurrection. 

Modern scholars continue to debate the iconography of these paintings since the images do not appear to correspond precisely to extant early biblical texts. The paintings also included one Old Testament subject, David and Goliath, and there are traces of a scene suggesting Paradise. A small drawing of Adam and Eve was added to the Good Shepherd painting at some point after its completion.

Baptism and the Eucharist were the two most important sacraments to the early Christian Church. Both were viewed as signs of the salvation promised by Christ to his followers. The subjects chosen for the Dura-Europos baptistery paintings are particularly in sync with the times since the themes represented center on deliverance and salvation. In this respect, the Dura-Europos paintings are comparable to the paintings in the Roman catacombs. They also serve as evidence that precursors for thematic cycles of mosaics showing Christ’s miracles and scenes from the Old Testament existed in the early Church.

The controversy over the use of pictorial decoration in the Church was ultimately resolved in its favor. In the words of Pope Gregory the Great in about A.D. 600, “Pictures are used in the church so that those who are illiterate may by looking at the walls read there what they are unable to read in books.”

CONSERVING THE CHRISTIAN BUILDING WALL PAINTINGS

In January and February of 1932, the Christian wall paintings at Dura-Europos were uncovered by archaeologists. Clark Hopkins, overseer of the excavations by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters during this period, marveled at the findings: “Our camp was awestruck by the extraordinary preservation of the Christian murals dated more than three-quarters of a century before Constantine recognized Christianity in 312.” Preparations for the removal of the wall paintings and their transfer to Yale began almost immediately.

Treatment of the Christian wall paintings began in March 1932 by French restorer Émile Bacquet, who sprayed the paintings with cellulose nitrate (now known to be an unstable material) before backing them with plaster reinforced with wood strips and hemp fibers. Removal of the paintings was completed in November 1932, approximately eight months later. This delay, and the accompanying exposure to air and moisture, may have exacerbated the deterioration of the paintings, which would eventually require several postexcavation conservation campaigns.

Although preserved by the earthen embankment heaped against the western wall during the final siege of the city by the Sasanians in A.D. 256, the wall paintings of the Christian building also suffered severe damage from the salts present in their burial environment. Through processes of dissolution and recrystallization, these salts migrated to the surfaces of the paintings and caused them to flake with significant loss of pigment. Even the coating applied in the field, meant to help stabilize the surface, added to their eventual deterioration.

When the paintings arrived at Yale, it was clear that their condition was extremely unstable. The paintings were analyzed in 1932 by George L. Stout of Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum conservation laboratory. The laboratory, established just a few years earlier, in 1928, was the first in the United States. Stout cited three sources of the paintings’ “mutilation”: the cellulose nitrate coating applied in the field, the fractured and dislocated structure of the paint, and soluble salts. Analysis of the paintings found no extant ancient binder, such as vegetable or animal glue, which would have helped prevent loss of pigment.

In an effort to stop the flaking of the paint, the paintings were sprayed with a new synthetic material, polyvinyl acetate. This consolidant was applied in the 1930s and again in the 1940s. By 1975 the paintings remained so unstable that a drastic strappo detachment, a technique developed in Italy for the removal of fresco paintings, was deemed necessary. 

For this procedure, cotton fabric was applied to the front of the paintings with animal glue. The glue dried and shrank, which pulled the paint layer away from the ancient plaster substrate, or underlayer. Next, the peeled paint layer was backed with a doughy mixture of sand, marble flour, fumed silica, and chopped glass bound in acrylic emulsion. After this backing dried, warm water was used to remove the cotton fabric from the front of the paintings, and areas of missing paint were toned (painted a neutral color so as to be less distracting). A secondary support was then applied to the reverse using polyester resin, woven fiberglass, and aluminum strips. Finally, the front surfaces were sprayed with acrylic resin. In 1985 the paintings were treated yet again, this time with beeswax and heat to set down curling animal glue and flaking paint.

The most recent conservation of the paintings, undertaken at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2010, made use of new solvent mixtures to set down flaking paint and to remove excess glue, fill material, and coatings from the previous treatments in order to stabilize the paintings and make them more suitable for exhibition. 

Working in collaboration with curators, the conservators used excavation photographs and enhanced digital-imaging technology to return the paintings as much as possible to their excavated appearance and prepare them for exhibition. Inpainting was done with reversible water-based paints and dry pigments containing modern chemical elements, such as cadmium, to make them clearly distinguishable from the iron oxide earth pigments used in antiquity. After restoration, these paintings will be on view at the Gallery along with complete documentation of their treatment and the archaeological evidence used in the conservation process.