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The reading for this week describes the rise of a Christian visual culture through the Byzantine empire. As art history is a practice of reading history through visual images as primary source material describing cultures, a main element of this is being able to decode symbols and understand their greater meaning thematically and contextually. 

These early Christian empires demonstrate the importance of developing a symbolic vocabulary that mimics earlier cultural traditions. Choose a visual symbol (the halo, angel wings, Celtic knotting, etc.) and describe how that symbol has been adapted to illustrate a Christian concept. Use specific artifacts to support your argument and try to explain the contextual significance, if any of such design decisions.

• This is a thematic response and may require more than one artwork to help support your description of how a particular symbol is read. Be sure to use artifacts from the time, and, if you wish, you may use contemporary artifacts to show the continuance of this symbolic vocabulary.
• Be sure to use MLA format
• Be sure to come back and read and respond to others.