ABSTRACT
In the Natural History, the Elder Pliny presents the development of ancient painting as a series of inventions which were contributed by successive major artists. The gestures which denoted sorrow in Byzantine art can be divided into three broad categories : those which constituted a violent display of suffering ; those which conveyed an inner contemplative grief; and those gestures which were ambivalent in their meaning, so that they could also signify emotions other than sorrow, such as joy or fear. Violent gestures of mourning were also depicted in works of art. They appeared in the funerary art of ancient Egypt12 and in early Greek vase paintings from the eighth to the fifth centuries. The conviction that excessive displays of grief were incompatible with a faith in the Resurrection appears in the works of later Byzantine writers.
