The Temple in the Iconography of Early Christian Art Carla Gomez ...

as the image of the new church, noting that other panels in Santa Sabina also
demonstrate a parallelism between the New Testament and the Old. 11
The link to an act of acclamatio and a Christian emperor has been put forward
by a number of scholars. Because of the cross on the roof over the pediment,
Lowrie interpreted the scene as a Christian emperor praying before a church,
while noting that at the time the panel was made only palaces were built with
towers, not churches. 12 Delbrueck concluded that the figure, perhaps an
emperor, appears in an attitude of prayer in front of a small oratory outside the
city, with the towers intended to represent a palace or the city gates. He considers
the cross makes it impossible to refer the scene to the Old Testament; nor does
he perceive any connection to the New Testament or to non-canonical books. 13
Brehier, on the other hand, believes that the person presented by the angel
may be the Emperor Constantine, and the building behind him the Basilica of
the Holy Sepulchre with the entire scene symbolizing the Christian Empire. 14
Cecchelli returned to the thesis of an acclamatio which the presence of an angel
and the Temple connect to the bestowal of divine authority. He considers that
within such a context, the only figure that fits is that of King David, who is an
ancestor of Jesus (Matthew 1:1; Luke 1:31; 2:4), which would also explain the
presence of the cross on the Temple. In depicting the cross frontally, placed
between two towers of the façade of a Syrian-type church, the intention of the
artist seems to have been, according to Cecchelli, to emphasize that behind the
Jewish Temple stands the conquering basilica of the new Christian law. 15
Berthier proposes yet another interpretation: the scene portrays "the
founding of the Church for the sake of all mankind" and shows Peter's return
to Jerusalem from Joppa after preaching the new law to the pagans, as narrated
in The Acts of the Apostles, 10 and 11. He is standing against the background
of the Christian Church and its cross, and the building depicted is a fifth century
church. 16
Leclercq holds that the scene represents Jerusalem in the form of the façade
of a church with two towers. 17 Kantorowicz's article concludes that the scene is
a literal depiction of the Prophet Malachi's prophesy of the coming of the
Messiah (Malachi 3:1-2) - "an eschatological Advent" in front of the Temple.
Malachi, the last of the prophets, constitutes the link between the Old and the
New Testaments. The scene describes the revelation of the Pantocrator in front
of the Temple, with the cross over his head predicting the coming of the New
Testament and perhaps the Second Coming itself. 18
The form of the building and the figures which appear and are in accordance
with the Gospel story, suggest that of all the proposed interpretations, the one
that considers that it is Zacharias the High Priest before the Temple is the most
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