Third-century painting from ancient Nicaea hailed as unique example of early Christian art outside Italy

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has unveiled a newly discovered early Christian fresco depicting Christ as the Good Shepherd, presenting a tile replica of the image to Pope Leo XIV during the pope’s first official visit to Turkey.

The presentation took place in Ankara on Thursday, as part of a state welcome that also highlights this year’s 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, convened in 325 in what is now the lakeside town of İznik.

A burial chamber frozen in time

The original fresco was unearthed earlier this year at the Hisardere Necropolis, an extensive late-Roman cemetery on the outskirts of İznik. Archaeologists working for the İznik Museum and Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism discovered the painting on the north wall of a richly decorated family tomb dated to the third century CE.

Excavations show that the necropolis was in use from the second to the fifth centuries, with this particular chamber standing out for both its size and its elaborate decoration. Unlike many painted tombs in the region—where floral or geometric patterns dominate—the Hisardere grave includes a full cycle of human, animal, and vegetal motifs, giving a vivid glimpse into the beliefs of a Christian family living in an overwhelmingly pagan world.

Young Christ among the flock

The newly revealed scene shows a youthful, beardless Christ in a short tunic, carrying a horned ram across his shoulders, flanked symmetrically by two goats amid dense greenery.

On the west wall of the tomb, another painting depicts an elegantly dressed husband and wife—likely the tomb’s occupants—reclining at a banquet. The so-called “eternal symposium” motif echoes classical funerary art, in which the afterlife is imagined as an endless feast, but here it appears alongside specifically Christian imagery, reflecting a period when older pagan symbols were being reinterpreted in the light of the Gospel.

Middle East Eye Art historians note that Good Shepherd scenes were common in Roman funerary decoration and quickly became central to early Christian iconography, expressing Christ’s care for the faithful and his search for the lost. Until now, comparable early frescoes were known only from three catacombs in Rome—Priscilla, Domitilla, and Callixtus—making the İznik discovery the first of its kind from the same era to be found outside Italy and the best-preserved example yet uncovered in Anatolia.

Turkish officials say a Vatican delegation that visited the site earlier in November was particularly struck by the state of preservation and the clear Christian symbolism of the painting.

Symbolic gift in a symbolic year

In Ankara, Erdoğan marked the papal visit by giving Pope Leo a glazed tile faithfully reproducing the Good Shepherd scene, produced by contemporary İznik craftsmen. The choice of motif and material was deliberate: İznik has been a renowned center of ceramic production since Ottoman times, and the image itself links modern Turkey with its early Christian heritage.

The meeting comes as Pope Leo makes his first journey outside Italy, a trip centered on the commemoration of the Council of Nicaea, where bishops from across the Christian world gathered in 325 to confront doctrinal disputes and affirm the divinity of Christ. The anniversary has brought renewed attention to İznik’s archaeological sites, including a basilica submerged in Lake İznik that some researchers associate with the council’s location.

During his stay, the pope is expected to visit both the lakeside ruins and the ongoing excavations at Hisardere, underscoring the shared interest of the Holy See and Ankara in preserving the region’s Christian past.

Bridging past and present

Experts see the Good Shepherd fresco as more than an artistic curiosity. It documents a moment when Christian communities were still small but confident enough to decorate their tombs with distinctly Christian imagery, even as they continued to use familiar Greco-Roman visual languages.

For Turkey, the find adds another layer to İznik’s already rich historical profile—Hellenistic polis, Roman city, Byzantine stronghold, Ottoman town, and now a focal point of Christian-Muslim diplomacy. For the Catholic Church, it offers a new window into how early believers pictured Christ long before Christianity became an imperial religion.

As Pope Leo XIV and President Erdoğan exchange a contemporary ceramic echo of the third-century painting, the small shepherd figure from an Anatolian tomb quietly becomes a symbol of something larger: fragile but real points of contact between ancient faith, modern scholarship, and today’s efforts at dialogue between Ankara and the Vatican.