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Early Christian Sculpture. 221 development in the time of Raphael and Michelangelo, made its first feeble efforts to give a suitable form to the ideal which had so long been latent in the minds of men. The date of the origin of Christian sculpture cannot be fixed with any certainty. The first traces of it are to be found in the catacombs. The sarcophagi of martyrs, confessors, bishops, etc., were carved or painted with the symbols of Christianity — such as the cross, the monogram of Christ, the lamb, the peacock (emblem of immortality), the dove (emblem of the Spirit), etc. Sometimes Christ Himself figures on these tombs, but as yet only in the symbolic form of the Good Shepherd surrounded by his flock, or seeking the lost sheep, or as the heathen Orpheus taming the wild beasts by the music of his lyre. In the time of Constantine (third century) we first meet with historical representations of Christ, and find Him on the sarcophagi in the midst of His disciples, teaching or working miracles. Even at so late a date, however, the antique type of youthful manhood is retained, and only in the fourth century was that peculiar form of countenance adopted which has been retained with certain modifications until the present day. Single statues w T ere extremely rare in the first four centuries of our era. The Emperor Alexander Severus (230 a.d.) is said to have had an image of Christ in his possession, and occasional mention is made of statues erected to Christ by those whom He had cured, but nothing definite is known of any of them. The only really important existing Christian statue of this period is a large seated bronze figure of St. Peter in St. Peter's, Home, which represents the apostle in antique drapery, clasping a huge key in one hand, and raising the other as