From Near Eastern art, Christian and Jewish painters used the size of figures and primary colors to indicate their importance. Often, figures are clothed in Persian garb. Intense eyes and furrowed brows, both noticeable in the Egyptian funerary portraits, become common motifs to capture piety. Yet the paintings clearly copy styles from Greco-Roman art, too. Greek and Roman poses are adopted.
Priests generally wear togas and important buildings are almost always depicted as Greek temples.
As Christianity became the official religion throughout the Mediterranean world, Christian art spread to the far reaches of the Empire. Europe envoys carrying illuminated manuscripts, derived from formal pattern books filled with hundreds of poses copied from original Greco-Roman works. Meant to spread Christian teachings and promote order, these books were sacred texts and carefully guarded works of art. Debate still raged in the eastern Byzantine Empire over whether Christians should even be allowed to depict images at all. Churches and monasteries were the only nominally safe havens for art.