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SCALA/ART RESOURCE, NY

THE GREAT MAGICIAN. Jesus uses a wand to summon forth Lazarus from his grave, where he had been dead for four days (John 11). This fourth-century mural painting from the catacomb of the Via Latina in Rome depicts Jesus in front of a small shrine that holds the swaddled cadaver. Utterly theatrical and visualizing the authority of the new religion, the raising of Lazarus was the most popular scene of early Christian funerary art.