M. MIGNOZZI, Dal Profeta ai Magi: storia di una migratio iconografica in età paleocristiana, in “Vetera Christianorum”, 47/1 (2010), pp. 99-116, ISSN 1121-9696.

In the domain of painting and sculpture of the Early Christian Art, a comparative typological analysis reveals a new and meaningful link between the prophet’s iconography and the Magi’s iconography. As a matter of facts, the gesture of indicating the star – with all its symbolic meanings – seems to have been intentionally transferred from the prophet’s iconography to the Magi’s one. Moreover, there is literary evidence in the patristic literature of the same period, that the link between these figures was strongly felt and that the Church of the origins used images as a powerful support to the catechesis. The aim was to show that the Old Testament’s prophecies were fulfilled by the birth of the child adored by the Magi.