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This chapter discusses the place of icons in worship, their character, and the way they came to symbolize the holy and mediate between earth and heaven. In particular, as icons became a vivid focus of devotion, they began to embody human relations with God the Creator and Ruler of the entire Christian world. It is argued that women played a notable part in this developing cult of icons. The chapter concentrates on some features of Late Antique Mediterranean culture, shared by Jews and Gentiles, pagan and Christian alike. These provided a common social experience within which the artistic evolution of the Christian church took place. In particular, the first part of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of funerary art, for this represents one of the most striking ways whereby Christians transmitted pagan rituals and artistic forms to their new faith. The second part examines some of the reasons for the preservation of these forms, once assimilated to a Christian mode, when they came under attack in the East. It asks how much that response informs us about the role of women in the cult of icons.

The modes of theatricality discerned through the cases of funerary art discussed in the chapters embody a socialized vision of death. This phenomenon, in contrast to classical modes of representing entertainment in tomb spaces prior to the eleventh century, which was primarily framed in terms of cosmological or ritual schemes, is defined as a “social turn” in funerary art. The notion of the social is used in a sense that both the theatrical content and modality manifested in the images do not merely describe “social aspects” of the funerary art, but present a paradigm in which the idea of the netherworld was projected through the frame of the society of the living as a larger whole. This phenomenon shows the sponsoring elites’ position in the changing boundaries among social groups, and also provides a new frame for understanding the increasingly flexible boundaries between disparate rituals and religious practices in middle-period China.

This chapter explores the conditions under which pattern no longer connects images to ideas. It does this by questioning the role pattern played in the Nalik people's conversion to Christianity, giving a historical account of the tensions between the missionaries and local people in New Ireland with the missions' arrival in the late nineteenth century. It shows that Naliks embraced certain images associated with the Christian mission and situated them within the ritual economy, a set of rites tied to a recognisable pattern of spatial and temporal events. Examining new patterned forms of funerary art that emerged with missionary activity on the island—such as decorative pillars in mission buildings, gravestones, and carvings depicting biblical scenes—the chapter looks at the difficulties local people experienced in engaging with these new religious forms.

The focus of Chapter 5 is on visual images of infants and very young children. A variety of media and formats are considered, including portrayals of children in marble reliefs and on coins and objects of personal adornment. The chapter discusses the introduction and development of the motifs of birth, breast-feeding and baby-care with parents, wet-nurses and others, images that give us insight into family life and the socialization of children. The chapter also explores the ways in which Italian children and barbarian offspring are represented in Roman art.