In the Christian Museum of the Vatican is a marble statue of the Good Shepherd, figured in the accompanying engraving, which is believed to be from the Catacombs. Although the execution is coarse, yet from the general style Rumohr thinks it probably the oldest extant specimen of 391 Christian statuary.[659] Sculpture seems to have bowed less willingly than painting to the new religion, and was much more tardy in laying its offerings on the altar of Christianity. It retained also much of the spirit of paganism, and never became thoroughly imbued with Christian sentiment. The colossal figure of the Galilean fisherman beneath the mighty dome of his proud mausoleum--that stateliest fane in Christendom--if not indeed the identical statue of the Capitoline Jove, is copied from a heathen model. The majestic Moses of Michael Angelo seems rather the embodied conception of the cloud-compelling Phidian Zeus than of the Hebrew patriarch, described as the meekest of men. Even Thorwaldsen’s sublime figures of Christ and the apostles exhibit more of the majesty of antique pagan art than of the meek and tender grace of Christianity. Sculpture, as M. Rochette well remarks, struck its roots deeply into the soil of heathenism, and was with the utmost difficulty transplanted therefrom. It is essentially pagan in its character, and is especially adapted for the expression of the severer virtues. Painting is more instinct with Christian spirit, and is the better fitted for the representation of the softer graces. Moreover, the profession of the sculptor was held in abhorrence on account of its connexion with idolatry. Tertullian stigmatizes the makers of images as the foster-fathers of devils and the procurers 392 of idols.[660] Prudentius calls Mentor and Phidias the makers and parents of the heathen gods.[661] All who were in any wise connected with this unhallowed craft were rejected from the ordinance of baptism and denied the holy eucharist.[662] “The ancient Christians,” Buonarotti truly remarks, “always kept aloof from these arts, by which they might have run a risk of polluting themselves with idolatry; and hence it arose that few or none of them devoted themselves to painting or to sculpture, which had as their principal object the representations of the gods or the myths of the heathen.”[663] Hence the almost entire absence of Christian statuary from the Catacombs. Even the sculptured bas reliefs of the sarcophagi before described were for the most part the product of that later period, when Christianity, coming forth from these subterranean crypts, walked in the light of day and basked in the favour of princes.