The use of these doubtless arose from the desire to deprecate anything that savoured of the images of heathendom, but evidently the early Christians soon arrived at the idea that painting might be admissible in a church where sculptured images could not be tolerated—the latter reminding them too much of the sculptured deities of the ancients—and consequently we find that the painted subjects from the heathen Pantheon were adapted by the artists who decorated the catacombs, but the figure of Christ was introduced where formerly a Roman god was the personage, thereby giving the mythological subject a new Christian meaning. In the catacombs of S. Agnese Christ is represented as the “Good Shepherd,” carrying on his shoulders the lamb that had been lost (Fig. 332); and in the catacombs of S. Calixtus, on a wall painting, he is portrayed under the type and figure of Orpheus, charming all nature with his music (Fig. 333). In the central octagonal panel he is represented with a harp, surrounded by the beasts and birds of the field. In the eight compartments around the central panel, four landscapes alternate with four figure subjects:—Moses striking water out of the rock, and opposite, Christ raising Lazarus, who is represented as a mummy; Daniel in the lions’ den, and opposite this, David with the sling. The heathen subjects of Cupid and Psyche, and others, have been used to represent Christian symbols. In sculpture, there are some remains of early Christian art in which the figures of Christ and his Apostles are clothed in the dress, and worked somewhat in the spirit, of the antique. The sarcophagus under the pulpit of S. Ambrogio at Milan is a good example of this kind of art. Some ivory carvings of this period have been executed as tablets, with scriptural subjects, after the manner of the Roman Consular diptychs. These ivory carvings, that exhibit a true spirit of the antique in their design, are not to be confounded with the later Byzantine diptychs that were executed in a more archaic style. [Illustration: Fig. 333.—Wall Painting from the Catacombs of S. Calixtus.] During the fifth century, and even in the latter part of the fourth, we see the more cheerful spirit of the antique character dying out, and the art of the time exhibits a greater importance and attention which is given to large masses, while smaller or minor surfaces are left empty, and decorative detail suppressed. There is an apparent striving to render the figure of the Redeemer—the chief personage—larger and more important in the scale of the decoration, and at the same time to give him more individuality. As the technical qualities of the Christian art diminished, the majesty and sublimity of the Great Teacher was expressed in a more spiritual conception of his divinity.