ABSTRACT
In a recent article, Jas Elsner compared Christian sarcophagi with the representation of the "Passage of the Red Sea" and earlier Roman triumphal reliefs which show adults leading children by the hand. Elsner was astute enough to avoid referring to an 'Imperialisation of Christian art', but was quite convinced that the Christian sarcophagi sculptors were 'taking particular motifs from earlier art'. Imperial iconography has been investigated from 1929 to 1999 in countless monographs and articles, such that it has advanced to the status of the most admired and best-known species among the Roman arts. Most authors have insisted that the throne in the apse mosaic of S. Pudenziana in Rome is simply an Imperial throne. The golden robe and halo of Jesus Christ have also been considered as purely Imperial attributes. The nimbus emerges more or less contemporaneously in Late Antiquity for Imperial portraits and images of mythological personages and personifications.
