Note 148 — Chapter IV · THE PROBLEM OF WORLD-HISTORY

In connexion with this very important link in the Author’s argument, attention may be drawn to a famous wall-painting of very early date in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla. In this, Mary is definitely and unmistakably the Stillende Mutter. But she is, equally unmistakably, different in soul and style from her “Early-Christian-Byzantine” successor the Theotokos. Now, it is well known that the art of the catacombs, at any rate in its beginnings, is simply the art of contemporary Rome, and that this “Roman” art had its home in Alexandria. See Woermann’s Geschichte der Kunst, III, 14-15, and British Museum “Guide to Early Christian Art,” 72-74, 86. Woermann speaks of this Madonna as the prototype of our grave, tenderly-solicitous Mother-Madonnas. Dr. Spengler would probably prefer to regard her as the last Isis. In any case it is significant that the symbol disappears: in the very same catacomb is a Theotokos of perhaps a century later date.—Tr.