La pseudo «renaissance théodosienne» dans l’art de l’Antiquité tardive

We here reconsider the idea of a “Theodosian Renaissance”, characterised by Ernst Kitzinger chiefly as the return to a kind of new classicism — including some alterations, of course — after a true crisis of Graeco-Roman art whose paroxysm would have occured during the Tetrarchic and Constantinian periods. But the evidence of several realizations of these decades, and a more objective look on other ones frequently invoked, determine a different interpretation. The classical spirit was not at all out of fashion around 300; and, regarding the general trend at least, it is rather a slow and progressive evolution, begun a long time ago, which led without any actual break to what was going to prevail about one century later.